Hanners' Blog

It's been a long time....

2009-07-12T20:59:00.003+01:00

Wow, I haven't written one of these in a while, have I? To be honest, the main reason for the lack of updates has been the migration of most of my spur of the moment thoughts to Twitter - It's hardly the stuff of legends but... well, that's kind of the point isn't it?

That aside, it seems that the non-stop insanity of work and the various projects to which I tether myself never ceases, happily swallowing up vast chunks of my existence. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot has been my humble anime 'blog, which has somehow turned into quite a monster in its own right when it comes to drawing in traffic - What was simply a fun distraction which I doubted I'd keep up for long has become a (thankfully still fun) behemoth with over 900 episodic reviews of anime and counting. As per usual, watching something grow from nothing to several thousand visitors per day is hugely pleasurable in its own right (beyond the fact that I genuinely enjoy writing about this stuff), and I'm currently resisting the urge to start throwing advertising on it and thus corrupting the wide-eyed innocence which is currently still holds in my "empire".

Funnily enough, this ramping up of the depth of my anime and Japanese culture interest has come at a perfect time, with UK Anime relaunching and looking to really push itself into the UK industry limelight. I've really thrown myself into doing my bit to make that transition to something bigger and better with gusto (perhaps too much so - bad control freak Andy, bad!), and I'm genuinely excited as to what could come of the hard work of the whole team there if we can keep it up and keep getting noticed for all the right reasons. Even beyond such ambitions, there's something hugely enjoyable about writing reviews and articles that aren't grounded on a technical foundation - Whereas my work for Elite Bastards generally requires precision and clarity, both UK Anime and my anime 'blog allow me to let loose with the full force of my vocabulary while having a bit more fun with my use of language.

That's not to say that Elite Bastards has been languishing, although things are pretty quiet on that front in a sense - The credit crunch is hurting in terms of advertising revenue and visitors, while the industry as a whole is in a huge lull before Windows 7 and DirectX 11 will make things interesting again. No doubt come the autumn I'll be firing on all the cylinders there again.

All of this is without my "real" job, which is also becoming increasingly busy - lots of meetings, winning big contracts and so on and so forth. It's still an interesting project for me in its own right, so no matter how much I whinge at times I can't really complain.

So, there you have it - Pretty much the last year in a nut shell (or at least the stuff worth/safe for mention on here). What will the next year hold? More of the same, I would imagine. Unless someone fancies whisking me off to Japan for six months...

150 reviews and counting...

2008-09-15T20:46:00.002+01:00

Today saw me publish our 150th review on Elite Bastards since introducing our current CMS system in February 2006. That's a lot of hardware in two and a half years! Now, let's see how quickly we can make it to 300...

It's Good to be Free

2008-04-06T20:49:00.002+01:00

What's this, three months without a 'Blog update? One of the grand ironies of 'Blogging about your own life is that the more that you actually have to talk about, the less time you have to write about it because you're too busy living said life.

So, what's been going on with me? Well, firstly my 'real' job has been hitting some fantastic new heights, involving some very big contract wins for the system I manage and plenty of other growth along those lines, to the point where I'm now heading up a team of five rotating engineers who work alongside me to keep things running smoothly and leaving me to focus on 'the hard stuff'. The year so far has been a fantastic challenge on this front, and although it's had its rough moments (working until 1am to recover from some major software issues counting amongst them) I'm loving every minute of it. I do need to book myself some holiday though...

After another small period of reviewer's block, I'm now writing material for Elite Bastards pedal to the metal, with plenty of great things both recently reviewed and still on the table for the coming weeks to keep me on my toes. Again, things have been falling into place nicely there, and we're continuing to grow our readership month on month, making for yet more positive news.

Away from all that, my Facebook page has been taken over by the ramblings of a madwoman... And I like it. ;o) Most importantly of all though, as of a couple of days ago I'm now officially a free man once again, with the paperwork finally confirming that the bane of almost my entire adult life is now nothing but bad history (or should that be bad comedy?). Yokatta!

So, that's the past three months in a nutshell, ignoring the fact that it's been snowing in April and other bizarre goings-on. Will the second quarter of the year prove to be as exciting and eventful? Probably not, but one can only hope for more of the same...

Some Kinda Rush

2008-01-14T20:54:00.000Z

Well, here we are, just a few short weeks into 2008, and already the year seems to be passing by at a million miles an hour. Ever since Big Ben struck midnight on New Year's Eve, everything seems to have been a blur of meetings, lunches, phone calls, passion, music and multimedia.

My 'real' job is bringing me more challenges by the day, from a presentation to the entire sales team of the company (which went down extremely well), to taking on additional staff to work under me on the project to which I'm assigned, leaving me free to build our offering, and thus its profitability, to new levels.

Elite Bastards is as busy as ever needless to say, with some new advertising opportunities coming my way, a huge amount of review hardware to enjoy and pile through, and plenty of other stuff to concern me with.

Then there's... Well, loads of other stuff going on with my life too. But that would be telling. ;o)

Thankfully, with what little downtime I get, there's a new season of anime fresh from Japan to see in the New Year, with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Gunslinger Girl getting second seasons, and a couple of other interesting series either starting or on-going. Music-wise things have also been interesting too, with some very mainstream music actually (shock horror!) hitting the spot for me. Strange times indeed. Perhaps the A&R people have finally noticed that the vast majority of bands on MySpace are, in fact, shockingly bad with a fan base that is little more than a circle jerk, and (again, shock horror!) gone out to start finding talented artists again. Or maybe I just got lucky, who knows.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now - After what the first half of January has had to offer, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what goodies the rest of it brings!

Christmas Wrapping

2007-12-25T20:40:00.000Z

Okay, so I said that my last 'Blog post would be the final one of 2007. Famous last words and all that...

Well, here we are again, another Christmas Day. So, how has it been? Well, it's Christmas Day, which is pretty much a guarantee of being 'any good' as days go. Despite starting out the day feeling a little like Shinobu Maehara in the Love Hina Christmas movie (now there's a reference to confuse the majority of you, thankfully!), since that point it's been a pleasant and enjoyable day. I realised just now that this has been my first day of real, unfettered downtime (i.e. not thinking about or concerning myself with work-related matters at all) in a long, long time. Hell, I've barely even touched a keyboard until tonight! I guess it really is something I should think about doing more often for my own good.

I think over the last couple of years I've also discovered that I really am getting old, in that I now enjoying the giving of gifts to others far more than I do receiving them. Sure, getting presents is great, but you can't beat the feeling of giving something to somebody that they really love. I guess I'm just a big softie after all...

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Tomorrow is Boxing Day, and I have at least one must buy item on my shopping list, meaning I'll have to brave the masses... Fun! Isn't it amazing how no matter how well prepared you are for Christmas and any gifts you know you'll be receiving and giving, there's always something you don't account for?

So, there you have it, Christmas in a nutshell - Lots of eating and lots of drinking (which I'm sat here trying to recover from), and a fair old whack of Christmas TV. Probably time for me to sign off and get back to it all in fact....

Ramping up for Christmas

2007-12-16T20:42:00.000Z

Wow, what a day - Not only have I done a massive amount of work towards two reviews for Elite Bastards scheduled to go live this week, I've also found time to watch Arsenal beat Chelsea (oh how, how sweet that was to watch!) and... Well, write this 'Blog entry.

While most other people seem to be looking towards shutting down for Christmas, things seem to be getting busier than ever for Elite Bastards. The major operation for this weekend was to final finish off what will be the largest single review the site has undertaken thus far - It's taken a lot longer than I hoped to get around to and finished, so it's good to see it come to a close with a release slated for tomorrow. Then, by midweek we should have our GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB review out the door, which is another big plus. There'll be no rest for the wicked though, as we'll (hopefully) be previewing something new and unreleased motherboard-wise around Christmas Eve. All that, and there's still a huge backlog of work to churn through!

Anyway, the one thing I've been meaning to highlight in this 'Blog since the turn of the month is the latest visitor numbers for the site. Thanks to Quinn's moving the forums to their own dedicated server, and the change of our e-mail services to a third-party provider, we're now finally starting to find some headroom to eke a little performance out of, allowing us to serve more readers than previously. That, combined with some big-hitting articles for the month of November (two major GPU launches and the NVIDIA Crysis driver furore) drove our numbers through the roof, and saw our visitor numbers climb by over 35% compared to October, with our page views creeping towards the half million mark.

Overall, that sets us some pretty hefty targets to live up to for 2008, and I for one can't wait to see where the Elite Bastards adventure is going to take me next.

Anyhow, that's probably all my 'Blogging done for 2007 (unless I suddenly find myself inspired to jot something down), so now is the time to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! Have a good one everybody...

Facebook and invading users privacy

2007-12-03T11:01:00.000Z

Scary stuff...

Seeing as my 'Blog here is replicated on my Facebook profile, I figured I'd link this here - It's well worth a read if you want to know what Facebook are doing with your online surfing habits.

What a rough week

2007-11-25T21:40:00.000Z

I can't really talk about it much (in fact, I can't really use this 'Blog for anything even remotely personal any more since someone decided to take liberties with it to create a tissue of lies against me, causing a great deal of upset to me and my family), but this week has been a tough one, with illness and worry aplenty, making it very hard to focus on anything outside of family matters.

Thankfully, there's now light at the end of the tunnel, although I won't be able to stop fretting for a few days yet, so hopefully I'll be able to hit December in an overall happier frame of mind. Fingers crossed everything turns out okay. Boy, do I need a break.

We now return to our legally friendly, boring and safe discussion of my website work...

Why? - Good Friday (Boards of Canada Remix)

2007-10-25T23:38:00.001+01:00

Need I say more? Not quite a new album, but new Boards of Canada material is always a guaranteed jaw-dropping musical experience, and always likely to veer off in an entirely different direction to whatever you were expecting from the Sandison brothers. Is this remix any different?

Of course not. Once again, fantastic beats are the order of the day.

"Looking at the stars, must be a reason..."

2007-10-04T19:26:00.000+01:00

This is probably the simplest 'Blog entry I've written in a long time, but I have to say it - I'm happy. Incredibly so. I love my life.

Elite Bastards is going from strength to strength, my 'real' job is both challenging and moving forward in the right direction apace, Arsenal are top of the Premier League, I know some fantastic people, the sun was shining in a beautiful Autumn day today, and I've just learned that karma really is a bitch, and that you reap what you sow in one of the most hilarious stories I've heard about one of my friends (EDITED FOR CLARITY) in a long time.

Today is one of those days when every breath feels fresher, food tastes nicer, every joke is funnier, the sun on your face is warmer, every conversation more interesting, every song on the stereo sounds better. Like I say, I love my life. Long may it continue.

Another month gone by...

2007-10-01T18:09:00.000+01:00

...means another leap in Elite Bastards' readership. The September statistics are in, and visitor numbers have increased another 8%, with page views up around 11.5%.

That's all there is to say really - I'm one happy camper yet again.

Due to a high level of shipments...

2007-09-27T22:13:00.001+01:00

...your delivery has been delayed. Thanks Scan, for screwing up my review schedule.

For all the glamour of getting to test and play with the last hardware and software, I would imagine that a lot of people outside of the review business don't realise how much thought goes into scheduling testing and article writing... In my case at least. More often than not these days, I have at least half a dozen pieces of hardware 'in flight' and awaiting review, coupled with vendors anxious to get said samples turned around, review exposure, and so on. This can involve making some pretty tough calls at times, and quite often scheduling everything in such a way that I can produce two quality articles a week while keeping everybody happy is an almost arcane art form. Nonetheless, it's something I try to do to the best of my ability - Some sites regularly take on hardware and fail to make time to review those samples, which is a trap I never want to fall into. On occasion, I fail to get things right (the recent PowerColor Radeon HD 2900 XT was a perfect example of a sample that got its testing/review time pushed back and back for various reasons, and once that kind of slide starts its hard to halt), but overall I like to think that time management is one of my fortes, and certainly most of the vendors that I deal with seem pretty happy with my efforts at both turning around samples quickly and, perhaps more importantly, keeping them in the loop as to what is (or isn't!) going on.

When something comes out of left-field to strike down your beautifully prepared plans, which are often arranged thinking weeks ahead in my mind, it really is frustrating, hence the whole reason for this 'Blog entry. With a huge amount of hardware coming into the Elite Bastards lab at the moment, I had everything planned out perfectly, with the weekend largely set aside for benchmarking our first Intel X38 motherboard sample - As this needs DDR3 memory, I ordered some from Scan at the start of the week, scheduling it to arrive on Friday in perfect time for the testing. This remained the plan until tonight, at which point I'm informed that said delivery is delayed, thus knocking down the whole beautifully arranged set of dominoes.

Thankfully, going back to the drawing board has given me time to look at something that was very much on the back burner, which should now (provided nothing else goes wrong!) make up next week's first article, potentially with a different motherboard review to follow, pushing back the X38 piece an entire week - Not perfect, but it keeps things rolling along at the pace I try my best to keep.

Of course, even the 'two articles a week' mantra isn't always possible - Sometimes due to plans going awry, and sometimes due to plain laziness on my part... We all need a break sometimes, right? However, also on the horizon are at least a couple of occasions where we have articles/reviews coming up that will take a lot of testing and groundwork. One in particular is going to be the single biggest review we've tackled on the site yet overall, and another exciting step up for both the content quality and reputation of Elite Bastards.

Reading a long, onerous 'Blog entry like this, some of you probably wonder why the Hell I go through all this... To be honest, even the mundane stuff like planning my time and schedules excites me, and I really do get a great amount of joy from keeping Elite Bastards running and growing. A lot of people I know tend to take me simply as quiet, laid-back kind of guy, without realising just how much passion and drive to make any endeavours I embark upon succeed I have. I guess you could almost call it my secret weapon... ;o)

Neon Genesis Evangelion

2007-09-16T17:33:00.000+01:00

Watching any anime series twice is pretty unusual for me, but three times... Well, it just doesn't happen very often. But, between the release of You Are (Not) Alone in Japan and me having a week with plenty of spare time on my hands, I found myself sitting down once again to make my way through Neon Genesis Evangelion - Doing it 'the proper way' of course: Episodes 1-20, the Director's Cut of Episodes 21-24, and then End of Evangelion as Episodes 25' and 26'.

For some odd reason, Evangelion is the only anime series I've only ever watched in its dubbed form previously, so third time around I righted that wrong and watched it with subtitles, and boy am I glad I did. I'm not sure whether it's down to a superior translation in the subtitles, better voice acting from the Japanese seiyū, some kind of third time lucky effect or just the fact that things work better in my head when I read them rather than hear them, but somehow this time around many of the subtleties of the Eva universe I'd missed out on previously clicked into place. Perhaps it's simply that I've matured, but watching the series this time, I found myself understanding far better the feelings, idiosyncracies and inter-personal relationships of the main characters, which made for a more satisfying and 'final' experience, particularly when it comes to that much-debated final episode in End of Evangelion. That isn't to say that I've completely figured out what those meaning-laden final seconds and words mean to me personally, but somehow this time around I came away with a more comprehensive feel for the world left at the end of the movie.

The one thing I really still can't get my head around is why so many people (and by this I'm talking viewers of the series, rather than in the show itself) hate Shinji Ikari so much. Of course, he is very much a 'flawed hero', and an excellently realised one at that (second only to Code Geass' Lelouch by my reckoning), but is he really the whiny, irritating character so many people see him as? Considering he's all but press-ganged into risking his life under the command of a father he hates, while being subjected to emotional and physical ordeal after ordeal, would anyone expect any different? I suppose it's just a personal thing, but I've always found Shinji's character fascinating, as I do Asuka's - I guess they simply both have facets that I can relate to directly, either in myself or people who I've been close to.

Anyway, at the end of the it all, the one thing I love most about Evangelion is how it engages your mind on so many levels - You come away from that closing scene wondering so many things, not just about the series, but also about yourself, your place in the world, and indeed the world around you itself. I really hope the new tetralogy of movies manages to keep that depth, while still adding something new and interesting to the franchise - Personally, I can't wait to see the first installment for myself, even though it appears to offer little deviation from the first six episodes of the original series (albeit squeezed into almost half the running time).

On the up and up

2007-09-01T18:24:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I'm really pissed off about something today (and no, not just going back to work on Monday, that I can live with), but at least it hasn't been all bad news - Since we've been using Google Analytics at Elite Bastards for our traffic analysis, I've been able to keep an eye on how things are going visitor-wise month on month. The numbers for August came in this afternoon, and we've seen a very big increase in our overall traffic:

June: 243,392
July: 259,067 (+6.44%)
August: 309,747 (+19.56%)

Considering we're still largely limited by our infrastructure (until the forums are moved to their own dedicated server at least), this is a fantastic achievement to my mind.

A good excuse to forget my troubles and have a drink or three tonight methinks!!

Hey Venus

2007-08-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

Hearing that a new Super Furry Animals album is close to release is always enough to excite me, and so it was when I first started hearing and reading talk about Hey Venus over the past couple of months.

This week, the album was released and... Man, what a disappointment. :o( Sure, there are one or two catchy tracks in there (with current single Show Your Hand being the pick of the bunch), but aside from that it's possibly the most bland collection of songs the band have ever managed to put together. For a band that has always delighted in fusing more traditionally indie and pop influences with what can only be described as psychedelic techno, the almost complete absence of the latter has left this album with what amounts to little more than a series of cookie cutter tracks - Lyrically clever in places (as always), but almost entirely lacking in punch. No moments to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up or have you grinning from ear to ear, the whole CD is really an exercise in mediocrity. I know the band have fallen on hard times financially and are doubtless looking for a more mainstream release to help tend to their bank accounts, but I'm not entirely sure that largely culling some of the properties that have made the band so unique is a good idea.

It seems that 2007 has been quite the year for good artists releasing uninspired new albums - The Scissor Sisters, The White Stripes, and now Super Furry Animals. Maybe this really is the death of the album that the media have been talking about so much recently....

You just hold me down so quietly....

2007-08-06T20:25:00.001+01:00

A lot of us on this little place called the Internet lost a friend this weekend.

Rest in peace Dries - You were a kind, generous and fun-loving guy, and you won't be forgotten.

We Are The Night

2007-07-02T20:55:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I've been truly impressed by The Chemical Brothers work (not since Surrender, truth be told, aside from the odd track here and there), and I wasn't expecting too much from the new album based on the current single (catchy, and liable to get stuck in your head, but with no real meat to it). Well, I was wrong, the new album We Are The Night is awesome. Not uniformly so, sure, but it has enough outstanding tracks to keep dragging me back for another listen.

It might be the slight Boards of Canada-ish feel to some of the tracks (or rather, sections of tracks - The intro to Saturate could almost have been pulled from Macquarie Ridge, and the reversed loops on Harpoons are about as BoC as you can get), but there's more to it than that. The Klaxons contribution is awesome, The Salmon Dance is as ridiculously sublime as the name suggests, and as for Burst Generator... Let's just say I haven't had a dance track make me want to get up and... Well, dance... Like that in a long time.

After so many disappointing albums this year so far, it's really refreshing to find something that actually makes you sit up and take notice.

It's been a while...

2007-06-30T13:54:00.000+01:00

Hmm, I haven't updated this in a while, mainly because it's been the same old slog recently - Not in a bad way, just plenty of work to be getting my teeth stuck in to. I'm slowly but surely growing my section of the business in my 'real' job (with some exciting times up ahead), to the point where I should hopefully soon be getting an assistant, the first step in building up my currently isolated job into a full-on department. In the meantime, Elite Bastards has seen a sudden Summer flood of review samples - It's almost as if all the vendors knew it was going to be a wet Summer and decided to give me something to do with my time. ;o) Anyhow, we've seen several new faces who are keen to work with us on the sampling front lately, which is always thrilling news, and that combined with some time off work has let me reach a point where I actually have more reviews on stand-by than I have time to publish each week!

Not a lot else to talk about aside from all that though - The new White Stripes album is rubbish (title track aside), I've become addicted to watching Big Brother (for my sins), Lucky Star is fast flying up my mental list of 'funniest anime ever' and, err... That's all really. I still have plenty of holiday left to take from my 'real' job before the Summer closes, but I've more or less made my mind up that I won't be going away anywhere this year - Instead, I'm seriously considering saving my money for the next twelve months to go and spend a week or two in Tokyo, Japan next year. It's somewhere I've always wanted to go and life's too short, so why not?

Wherever I lay my phone, that's my home

2007-05-14T21:07:00.000+01:00

It had to happen and finally it has - I upgraded my phone! Gone is the shoddy, battered old Nokia 3310, and in its place is a shiny, fancy Nokia 6300. Hurrah!

I've also gone from Pay As You Go to a full-on contract, and changed my number so that only people I want to have it do (unlike my old mobile number, which was still known to all sorts of undesirables *cough*my ex-wife*cough*). Of course, if I don't hate you but you don't have my number yet due to my own absent-mindedness, drop me an e-mail and I'll let you have it.

Aside from that, this past weekend was taken up with two things which couldn't be more different. On the one hand, there was drinking copious amounts of wine while watching the Eurovision Song Contest, which is always good for several hours of hilarity. On the other, and taking up the rest of my weekend, was the far more serious business of sifting through 2GB of information, images and videos to put together an R600 architecture and technology preview for Elite Bastards. Delving into a new architecture is always both stressful and rewarding in equal measure, split between learning new things (which is always good) and fretting about whether you've got it right and covered all the salient points. All in all, I think I did a pretty decent job, and am actually glad I didn't have hardware testing to worry about directly alongside the 'science bit' - There's no way I could have produced 8,000 words and been as comprehensive if there had been benchmarking involved as well! Having said that, I'm now itching to get my hands on a board to match the theory with the practice.

Away from my hard work and motivation over the weekend, I'm really feeling very much burned out right now. My real job has been a very hard working slog lately, and it's left me generally drained when it comes to sitting down to test or write for EB (as you may have noticed by the content slowing up). The whole thing has reminded me that, earlier this year, I had both an additional hardware and games reviewer lined up for the site, both of whom have since disappeared without a trace or an article to their name. I could really do with some dedicated help, but that whole scenario has soured me somewhat to the idea of getting assistance outside of the awesome team of guys I have on staff already. We'll have to see I suppose.

If nothing else, I have a week off work coming up soon, with another to follow not long after, which should give me some much needed respite and chance to recharge my batteries. With any luck, the full version of Forza 2 should be out on the Xbox 360 by then - Have I mentioned my addiction to the demo yet? ;o)

I like hexadecimal

2007-05-02T12:40:00.000+01:00

My favourite string is:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Stepping blinking into the light

2007-04-19T18:26:00.000+01:00

Okay, own up - Who stole the last six weeks?! It really doesn't feel like the beginning of March since I last wrote an entry here - Where is the year going?

As you can probably guess from the intro, the last month or so has been a blur, focused almost entirely around my work. My 'real job' has been a busy yet heady mixture of meetings, disasters, recovering from disasters and more meetings, while Elite Bastards has seen me take in the joys of the Birmingham NEC for Channel Expo 2007 (with a little 'real job' stuff mixed in for good measure), while piling through the huge backlog of review samples that had been building up. Thankfully, I've managed to cut a swathe through that particular pile... Just in time to receive a bunch of new hardware for review. As I'm sure you all know by now though, I wouldn't have it any other way...

The big highlight of recent weeks on the review from has our involvement with the GeForce 8600 GTS launch - It's always a real buzz to be caught up in these things despite all the hard work and brain power involved, and the adrenaline never fails to start pumping in those final few minutes before you hit the big red 'go live' button, send off the mailshots, and then sit back and wait for the thoughts and reponses to your writing. I was pretty pleased with our finished piece on G84, and it seemed to be received well from all the comments I saw, so a job well done I'd say.

Away from EB, not a lot to report really - The girlfriend is no more (as in broken up, not as in dead, don't worry), and the weather is fantastic right now. Oh, and I need a holiday - I haven't had any time off work in eight months now. :oO

Still juggling those balls...

2007-03-02T23:06:00.000Z

An entire month without a new 'Blog entry can only mean one thing - I've been busy. Very busy. This has indeed been the case throughout February - I don't remember ever having so many things to deal with in my life.

Top of the agenda has been my new position in my 'real' job - Despite being deceptively simple at its core, I've been driving hard for a lot of improvements and extensions to the remote management system of which I'm now in charge, which is in turn generating more work and revenue for the company. More revenue for me too - Two pay rises in as many months says I must be doing something right. ;o)

My efforts on this front have had a nasty side effect of slowing my output at Elite Bastards, but I'm now starting to regain my focus on that front I hope. I have a few reviews on the go at present, and last weekend I spent a very pleasant few hours in a Covent Garden restaurant with a couple of guys from AMD, chewing the breeze about CPUs and chipsets (With a very brief mention of R600, of course). The main focus of the chat was, of course, AMD's recently launched 690 chipset - I have all the relevant hardware sat here at the moment, so it's something else for me to crack on with.

Finally, amongst all this, I've been trying to make plenty of time for my girlfriend too. If I'm honest though, I don't think that particular relationship is going to hold out much longer - It's hard when the person you're with doesn't understand your passions in life and what drives you, and that seems to be the case here. Ah well, c'est la vie - It may sound odd and a kind of backwards way of looking at things, but I'm really keen on making myself more time for review writing again starting soon, I've really missed the challenge of growing Elite Bastards and writing definitive reviews for the site. I suppose that makes it official - I'm a workaholic.

So, that's basically my month from a 10,000 foot view - Lots of meetings, lots of running around getting stressed, and so on. I'd like to pretend March will be somewhat calmer for me, but that just isn't going to happen... ;o)

Left Side Drive

2007-01-24T17:18:00.000Z

Well, I haven't written anything here since the beginning of the year, so I figure a quick update is very much overdue.

Thus far this year, I haven't been pushing quite as hard on the content front for Elite Bastards as I need to be - We've had some awesome reviews and articles hit the site, so the quality is there (of course!), but I need to ramp up the quantity again somewhat. I certainly have plenty to be getting on with, in particular with the arrival of a couple of copies of Windows Vista on my door step this week. Thus far, it's been more of a driver-induced nightmare than anything else, with Vista RTM drivers simply not available for some of the hardware I use, which is really beyond frustration considering the long gestation period of the Operating System . Come on guys (ASUS and Hauppage, I'm looking at you), pull your fingers out!

Anyway, the main reason right now for something of a slowdown in my writings is, quite blunty, a bit of romance. :oP Yes, I've gone and fallen head over heels with a very awesome someone (who shall remain nameless at this juncture), which has left me more than a little easily distracted and short on time when it comes to doing anything else. It's all good though if you ask me.

Finally, my new position in my 'real' job starts at the beginning of next month, so I guess I'll have to wait and see how everything shakes down time-wise once I've settled into all these exciting new happenings in my world. Don't worry though, I'm sure I'll be back working myself to the bone on the review front in no time. ;o)

No time for running away now...

2007-01-01T10:06:00.000Z

Well, here we are, well and truly ensconced in 2007. Of course, New Year is traditionally a time for looking back on what has gone before, planning for the future and so on, so it would be remiss of me not to do something along those lines.

Personally, I wouldn't say 2006 was the most eventful year ever, but it was certainly a pretty successful one overall. Elite Bastards' readership grew substantially in my first full year at the helm, seeing us reach that critical mass where we actually get pretty decent pickings on the sample front. My 'real' job has been somewhat turbulent for reasons I'll explain in a bit, but in a good way at the end of it all. Oh, and I finally figured out that the ex-wife is a sociopath and pathological liar, which must count for something? It certainly makes me glad to be away from all that hassle. On the flip side of that I've met some awesome people during the year, some of whom will hopefully remain a big part of my life in this coming twelve months.

So, what of 2007? Well, one of my bigger challenges will begin in February as part of my 'real' job - With the contract I'm currently assigned to petering out at the end of January, I'll be moving into a new role, in which I've basically been given my own department (dealing with remote, proactive support) with a free reign to improve and extend it as I see fit. There's going to be a lot to learn, but it sounds like an exciting opportunity to me - I look forward to getting stuck into it.

Then, of course, there's Elite Bastards, which involves the tough job of maintaining the pattern of growth we set for ourselves in 2006. As I write this, I've basically sealed the deal on getting an additional hardware reviewer on board, and am just trying to sort out the kinks to make his life easier hopefully. I also have someone else whose promised to kick out a load of game reviews, so hopefully our editorial output should be even greater this year. Once that has settled down, it may be time to start looking into the dreaded advertising to bring some revenue back to the site. Finally, in the first weeks of the year one of our intrepid reporters (aka Jollemi) is going to be jetting off to CES in Las Vegas, which is a pretty damn good start to proceedings if you ask me.

All in all then, you could say I've set myself some pretty hefty challenges for the year, which is both exciting and a little scary. Wish me luck!

So here it is...

2006-12-17T12:34:00.000Z

At last, I'm beginning to feel those first little tingles of Christmas cheer. Let's face it, it just hasn't felt like Christmas much yet - No amount of decorations or present buying can make up for that fact that it's just felt too mild to be the middle of December. Even the shops seem to have been late to get into the swing of things.

Anyway, despite all that, my calendar is telling me that yes, it really is almost December 25th, so the past couple of weekends have involved queuing for what seems like hours to buy wrapping paper (of which I now have enough to cover the Titanic), cards and other assorted gifts, while also biting fingernails and hoping beyond hope that anything I've ordered online arrives in time. Still, I'm now 95% of the way to being ready for the big day, so all is well.

On the down side of things, I'll actually be working all over Christmas in my increasingly frustrating and confusing 'real' job, public holidays aside, although hopefully just reduced hours with any luck. Things have actually been pretty busy on the work front, which has left me with less time to plough through the backlog of review work which still remains for Elite Bastards.

Improvements are afoot on this front however, as I've finally taken the plunge with regard to looking for additional reviewers to help both share the workload and expand the site further in 2007. I've had some pretty exciting offers in the few days since making a front page request for applicants, so I'm very hopeful that we can bring some more quality staff on board to drown you guys in a cornucopia of content next year.

It may only be a few days, but I'm really looking forward to taking a proper break over Christmas, this year's exertions are most definitely starting to catch up with me, and I'm feeling pretty burned out right now.

One foot in the world of consoles

2006-11-28T23:10:00.000Z

Hmm, this entry was going to be called 'One foot in the world of next-gen consoles', but seeing as all three major devices are now available (well, somewhat) I guess we can't really use that moniker any more.

Anyway, yesterday I traded five crisp, shiny £20 notes with a guy at work, and in return I lugged home a brand-spanking new Xbox 360. Twenty minutes or so after getting home, the beast was unpacked, plugged in and ready to go. Hurrah!

Thus far my only real gaming time has been with Gears of War (the only title I actually own right now - I'm very much open for suggestions as to what to buy/beg/borrow/steal next), and I'm beginning to understand what the fuss is about - For starters, the game looks beautiful, although I have to take out my PC gaming eyes somewhat and try and ignore the abject lack of anti-aliasing and decent texture filtering. The aliasing isn't too pronounced thanks to smart world design and High Dynamic Range rendering, but the lack of full-on anisotropic filtering is really poor considering the horsepower on offer in Xenos - The obvious mip-map boundaries and shimmering is awful. Ah well... More importantly, the game has been great to play once I overcame my phobia/ineptitude with game pads, and the layout of the controller is not far short of spot on, so kudos to Epic for that. My only worry is that the whole 'duck and cover' game play that is fascinating me right now is going to wear thin after a few hours of gaming.

Apart from Gears of War, I've messed around with a couple of demos a little - Sonic The Hedgehog, just to see if they ruined the franchise again (they have), and Dead or Alive 4, which doesn't look as pretty as I might have hoped. I've also downloaded the demo for Rainbow Six: Vegas (mainly because I'm a pixel whore and I remember hearing that it looks pretty somewhere), but I haven't checked that out yet.

Aside from my console gaming fun, my return to work in my 'real' job has been insanely busy, and I've also had further confirmation that my ex is a completely unhinged psychopath after calling me out of the blue to have some weird, rambling imaginary conversation so that her boyfriend thinks that something she can't be arsed to do is actually all my fault. Err, okay....

Oh, and if anyone wants to know my Xbox Live gamer tag, it's Hanners. Imaginative, huh? I don't see myself going for a Gold subscription any time soon, but you never know, and I still have a one-month trial to burn once I've got a few more games to actually use it with so feel free to add me.

It's fun to stay at the CCNA...

2006-11-26T12:46:00.000Z

Last week saw Elite Bastards take a rare back seat in my life for once, as I was shipped off for a week of Cisco training - Of course, I'm not actually a CCNA yet (that would require taking an exam - Ugh!), but I do now have a head full of networking stacks, OSI models, routers, switches and IOS commands. All in all, it was really a good week, and I learned a tonne of stuff, so it was worth the early starts and driving to and from Southampton every day for a week.

Last week was also Christmas come early for me - My parents had decided to furnish me with a new laptop for Christmas, which was ordered last weekend, but had already turned up by Wednesday! So, I'm now the proud owner of a Dell Inspiron 6400, complete with Merom-based Core 2 Duo CPU, 1GB of RAM, Mobility Radeon X1300 and 1680x1050 wide screen LCD. All in all, it's a huge improvement over my previous laptop - It's thinner, it's quieter and it's faster. Considering the amount of DVDs and anime I watch on it these days, the wide screen LCD is a real boon, and I now have a system beefy enough to run High Definition video as well, which is becoming ever-more important. So, err.... Happy Christmas!

With a month to go before we celebrate the imaginary birth of the son of an imaginary deity, I can't help but wonder where this year has gone, it truly is frightening. I'll wax lyrical about how 2006 has gone and my expectations for 2007 some other time though, it still feels too early right now.

The coming weeks are going to be a hectic one of catch-up on the review front for me I feel, I've gotten so far behind between the Cisco training and taking time out for my G80 review that I have one Hell of a lot of work to do. Definitely time for me to refind my focus and start pushing forward with work aplenty between now and the festive season.

The G80 summit

2006-11-14T12:36:00.000Z

Boy, has the past week been a blur... Almost non-stop benchmarking, IQ testing, reading technical documentation and writing. I've completely lost track of how much time I've sunk into my GeForce 8800 GTX review, but I just hope it's worth it! There's now light at the end of the tunnel though, and hopefully I should have the article completed and ready to go for Thursday if I can keep on trucking over the next day or so.

And that, really, is all there is to report. There's a certain love/hate relationship with such a new architecture from the reviewer's point of view - Love of playing with and understanding (and hopefully getting others to understand) the new technology, but hating the sheer quantity of work that needs to be undertaken in such a short period of time. It really does burn you out pretty quickly, but I have no time to rest once I'm finished with the piece - I now have a vast backlog of hardware to get through, ignoring other samples that are liable to come my way, and with a week long course for me next week my testing and writing time is going to be pretty limited.

Anyway, I've finally plucked up the courage to switch this 'Blog to the new beta version of Blogger (which ties in nicely to my G-Mail account), so let's see if this thing actually works!

What day is it again?

2006-10-27T16:47:00.000+01:00

You know that things are getting busy when you can't remember what day of the week it is half of the time (Although I know that today is Friday, hurrah!), and that's exactly the state I'm in at the moment. As things stand, my workload for Elite Bastards is through the roof, where I've been snowed under with graphics boards, motherboards and the like. Of course, this is a good thing, so I'm not complaining, but at the moment my life seems to revolve around 'article publishing days' rather than the metric used by most normal humans, known as 'days of the week'.

The most excellent news hardware-wise for the site has been the recent interest shown by ASUS in the sampling department, which is probably the biggest single step we've taken during my tenure in the hot seat so far. Add that in to the likes of Foxconn, PowerColor and Cyberlink, and we're really starting to build us some useful contacts.

The only thing that dampens my spirits at this particular juncture is the continued lack of communication with NVIDIA - With G80 just around the corner, I don't even have enough concrete information for a technology preview (although it sounds like all but a handful of journalists who got invited to Santa Clara are probably in that very same boat) which is, quite frankly, both hugely frustrating and disappointing. Anyway, I shall just have to suck it up, keep on trying, and look forward to (hopefully) a more fruitful time out of the R600 launch whenever that may be.

There are more exciting times around the corner for the site, but I shall keep these under my hat until they're all finished and ready to go. Suffice it to say, one of these mysterious 'exciting things' in particular will be a relief and source of happiness for our regular readers provided it goes to plan. :o)

Away from my helter-skelter life of reviews, last Tuesday was also my birthday. I'm not much of a birthday person, but one individual in particular really pulled me out of my apathy to put a big smile on my face this week. Thank you - You know who you are. ;o)

Towards the end of November I've now been booked in on a week-long CCNA course as part of my 'real' job, which means that I might have some fancy-dan Cisco-related letters to put after my name soon with any luck.

Finally, today I was offered an Xbox 360 for £100 by a work colleague. Can I resist the temptation, considering Gears of War went Gold this week? Probably not, in all honesty. Brace yourself for me raving about the wonders of next-generation console gaming sooner rather than later. Or, more likely, complaining about how rubbish I am at using gamepads.

Learn the lesson, take the blows

2006-10-01T16:52:00.000+01:00

So, after the best part of a week of feeling lousy with the 'flu, I'm finally back up, running and fighting fit.. Well, more or less anyway. It's pretty good timing as well, seeing as I've had to work quickly towards testing for and writing a UK exclusive (and, I have a funny feeling unless I get pipped to it, a world exclusive) review for Elite Bastards. As I seem to say far too often on this 'Blog, exciting times ahead... ;)

My personal life has also received a boost in the past few days, as I've finally swallowed my pride and embarrassment and gotten back in touch with someone who used to be a good friend of mine a couple of years ago. To cut a long story short, she was a mutual friend of mine and Tara's for quite a while, but thanks to Tara's incredible capacity for jealousy and paranoia I broke off talking to her for the sake of any further hassle (coupled with the fact that Tara had treated her like dirt in the past anyway, which made things all the more awkward). That turned out to be a big mistake of course, and I've really missed talking to Sara in the intervening period, until finally deciding to apologise for the way I just abandoned our friendship. Thankfully, my apology was accepted, so we're now talking and back to normal once again. So, that's another little bit of my life repaired for the better. Yay!

There's nothing worse...

2006-09-25T20:58:00.000+01:00

...than being a guy, and being ill. It sucks. Nobody has ever been as ill as I feel now - Or so my brain tells me in a horrendous act of self-pity.

Yet, here I am, sat trying to write an article through a haze of drugs and tissues and bleary eyes. Ugh. Still, my drug-induced writing has somehow allowed me to work some Smiths lyrics into a comparison, so I guess it isn't all bad. :p

Apart from that, things aren't too shabby - We have some very excellent stuff around the corner content-wise at Elite Bastards, I have another review up at UK Anime, and so on and so forth.

Now, I would go to bed to continue my suffering, but the cat's curled up and fallen asleep on my lap while I was writing this. Crap. It's alright for some... :p

If it takes another life, I'll wait for you on the other side...

2006-09-17T14:40:00.000+01:00

I have to admit, I have something of a vested interest in the Scissor Sister's second album, Ta-Dah, if only because me and Laura have tickets to see them in November. I have to say though, their second album is largely disappointing. Gone is the biting wit of their eponymous debut album, replaced largely with bland 'pop by numbers' efforts that almost leave the group acting as a parody of themselves. There's nothing wrong with leaning heavily on 80s musical influences as long as you get it right, but from where I'm sitting Ta-Dah misses the mark on almost every count, with the current single I Don't Feel Like Dancin' acting as a warning sign for the watered-down cheese fest that follows.

In fairness, things do pick up a little on the second half of the album, culminating in Ta-Dah's saving musical grace - The Other Side, which turns out to be possibly one of the greatest tracks of 2006, and mixing the shoulder-shrugging melancholy you might associate with The Smiths against the kind of catchy pop sensibilities of Duran Duran and the like at their peak. Simply awesome stuff, but not enough to save this rather disappointing album. I can only hope they focus on their debut album in concert...

Success breeds success

2006-09-12T13:04:00.000+01:00

I love it when a plan comes together - Particularly when I didn't even have a plan in the first place. ;o) Things seem to be moving on to yet another level at Elite Bastards very quickly - In the past week, I've had a game developer seeking an interview with us (which is done and dusted, and will see the light of day next week together with exclusive screenshots), two major graphics AIBs (one of whom I've been trying to curry favour with for a long time) sending hardware my way, and another one sounding very promising on that front. I can see it being a very busy autumn and winter for the site...

Things are still fun-packed on the anime reviewing gig too, with one new review published today and another completed and ready to go. It really is a great job to do, even reviewing the poorer quality shows.

Anyway, I really wanted to use this entry to share my excitement, so with that done, back to work!

Forging ahead

2006-09-03T17:16:00.000+01:00

Boy, have I been on a roll this past week - Not only did I finish our rather popular Radeon X1650 PRO review for Elite Bastards, I've also now found myself an entire week ahead with regard to content, with two reviews sat ready to go any time I feel like it. If only I could stay in this situation all the time, it's a really great feeling to be sat atop a stack of good content. On top of that, I also had time to polish off my first review for UK Anime as well - Appaling to watch though it was, writing an anime review was a joy, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Hopefully, I can keep this state of affairs going, as I actually have a much required two week break from my 'real' job starting from now, meaning plenty of rest, relaxation and... Well, 'other things' (Use your imagination!)... for a while. It should also give me at least some time to keep up on the review front, with a fair amount of stuff in the pipeline, not least moving my test system to Core 2 Duo hopefully.

Recent weeks have also made me decide that it's finally time to bite the bullet and take serious action with regard to speed and time-out issues with Elite Bastards' server - This past week, we've had things tuned up a fair amount, with a little more tweaking on the way, but things still seem a little sluggish to me, so I'm looking very seriously at moving us to a new server and host entirely. I've seen the deal I want, so if all this tweaking doesn't get us where I want us to be performance-wise, it'll be time to move again to a very impressive sounding rig. Fun! Needless to say, I'll keep you all posted on where things go on that front as time goes on.

Bank Holiday

2006-08-28T11:16:00.000+01:00

Nothing else to say really, except it's pretty much the last bank holiday of the year. Better make the most of it then I suppose....

"Bank holiday comes six times a year
Days of enjoyment to which everyone cheers
Bank holiday comes with a six pack of beer
Then its back to work a.g.a.i.n."

Norwegian Wood

2006-08-23T19:15:00.000+01:00

After such a flurry of 'Blog updates recently, I seem to have gone a little quiet all of a sudden, but at last I now have a few interesting things to talk about.

Firstly, this week I finished reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood - An absolutely fantastic book that I found myself relating to in a number of ways as well as finding it pretty deeply moving at times. It's one of those books you finish feeling that you've learned a little more about yourself and people you've had dealings with, but without being able to quite put a finger on what you've learned. Anyway, great stuff nonetheless. Next on my 'to read' pile is Ulysses by James Joyce, weighing in at a thousand pages of not exactly easy to read prose. I like a challenge though, so wish me luck!

Speaking of challenges, the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe board I was provided to test Radeon X1900 CrossFire has finally proved to be a challenge too far for me - To put it simply, it's been a nightmare to work with, with some horrible Serial ATA-related instabilities and quirks that I finally can't continue trying to work around, so as I write this I'm rebuilding my nForce4 system so that I can get back to working and benchmarking at a better pace. Unfortunately, this means that the X1900 CrossFire article I've been promising for so long is now on the backburner again, but I should be updating the Elite Bastards test rig to a Core 2 Duo-based system in the coming weeks, which should put me back on track on that front.

The final item of note on my agenda is that I've sealed myself another article writing gig today, this time writing for the number one UK-based anime website UK Anime. I don't actually have anything to review just yet, but everything is basically agreed with the site owner so you should be seeing reviews by me popping up there every now and then too. The great thing about this is that I spend a fair bit of my free time watching anime anyway, so it'll be a nice change of pace to get to write about it too, while at the same time not cutting into my priorities at Elite Bastards in any discernible sense. In all honesty, I can't wait to get started to try my hand at something a little different!

Boom! Shake The (Server) Room

2006-08-14T18:27:00.000+01:00

Whoops, I did it again - We got Slashdotted. Needless to say, the server is taking a pounding at the moment, the site is all but inaccessible, and our traffic is through the roof. It's nice to be popular, but sorry for all you guys and girls who are having to live without your fix of Elite Bastards for a while. Normal service will be resumed shortly... Until the next time it happens. ;)

Losing My Religion

2006-08-08T18:09:00.000+01:00

All my life, I've been looking for a religion that truly fits in with my worldview, and now I have found it - That's right, I am now the newest convert to 'Haruhiism'! ;)

If you're wondering what the Hell I'm on about, you'll either have to ask or watch The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Personally, I'd recommend the latter. :p

Still Alright

2006-08-06T18:57:00.000+01:00

Well, it seems that someone up there doesn't want me to finish this Radeon X1900 CrossFire review - First I ended up with a faulty CrossFire Edition board, which ATI did an awesome job of sorting out a replacement for me. Then, once I was finally ready to sit down and start work, the bout of lethargy that hit me a couple of Blog entires ago put a stop to things. Now I'm over that - The 74GB Raptor in my test rig has died, which leaves me needing to shell out for a new one before I can proceed any further. Argh!! Any donations for the 'Buy Andy a new Raptor' fund will be gratefully received. ;)

Anyway, when I haven't been tearing my hair out troubleshooting my test system, I've been thoroughly enjoying (and this surprised me too) listening to Lily Allen's debut album, Still Alright. It's simply a fantastic record from beginning to end - The biting wit and 'poisonous' lyrics of Dubstar at their most vengeful, the street-smart delivery of The Streets or Dizzy Rascal, and at times the beats and musical constructs of Madness and two tone at their best. This could very well be one of the best pop records I've heard in years.

As quickly as it began...

2006-08-03T21:37:00.000+01:00

...it ended. The day after writing about my feelings of lethargy and reviewers block, so it was gone, and I found myself having a mammoth article writing session lasting several hours. Similarly, tonight I've been hard at work benchmarking away on a high-end graphics board review and made a lot of progress on that front. No guarantees the review will be done next week as I'd like because it'll be a pretty long piece, but at least I'm getting somewhere. Oh, and I have another yet to be looked at by Elite Bastards SKU on the way next week too. :D

Mental block? What mental block?! ;)

Inner Universe

2006-08-01T19:55:00.000+01:00

Well, been a while since my last Blog update, so it's time to throw some stuff down here I suppose - Not that there's much to talk about of note.

In all honesty, I've felt really drained these past few weeks, in no small part due to the hot weather, but also just down to a general sense of lethargy at the moment. I'm not too sure what it is, but I really haven't been able to get my teeth into anything much major Elite Bastards-wise lately, even though I still have plenty to be getting on with. I guess I'm just stuck in a bit of a writer's block-esque rut, but at the moment I can't seem to drag myself out of it. It doesn't help that I'm coming home most nights from work pretty knackered as things have been busy and stressful on that front (to the point where my blood pressure is now officially 'too high' - Eep!) - I guess I just need a holiday or something... So, if anyone has some magical ideas to pep me up and get the articles flowing again, then I'm all ears.

The one thing I have been indulging in plenty of lately is anime - Catching up on vast amounts of School Rumble (which is now officially the funniest anime ever in my book), as well as taking in all of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which was quite simply excellent. The only question now is... What to watch next?

Anyway, that really is all I can think of to type as I sit here feeling tired and altogether sorry for myself because I can't find the motivation to do much else. So, fingers crossed my next update is rather more eventful and upbeat than this one.

Running through sprinklers

2006-07-03T20:26:00.000+01:00

You know it's a hot day when you get home from work, spot the sprinkler running in the back garden (No water shortages here, hurrah!), and decide to run through/stand under said sprinkler for a minute or two. :D

Yes, if you haven't guessed, Summer has well and truly hit the UK this week - England are out of the World Cup, Henman is out of Wimbledon... Yep, definitely Summer. ;)

On the down side, any kind of Summer heatwave also means that the tiny, cramped space that is the makeshift Elite Bastards office (or spare room, to give it a less grandiose title) is more or less out of bounds - Too hot to work, and definitely too hot to do much in the way of benchmarking. Luckily, Summer also means less on the sampling front anyway, but I have slipped behind with the things I want to get done as a result of not enjoying getting roasted, and thus I've been spending a fair amount of time (shock, horror!) outdoors. Nonetheless, don't worry too much, as I'm still plugging away on content for the site, and I know a couple of the other guys either have some things up their sleeves or will do shortly, so there should be plenty to keep you entertained. :p

Three Lions on a shirt

2006-06-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

This is one of those 'not to much to mention, but I'll write one anyway' kind of Blog posts - It's Summer, which means not a lot in the way of exciting product launches or news and reviews to discuss at Elite Bastards... And who would want to? There are far more important things to involve oneself in, such as drinking, enjoying the sunshine, and that small matter of the World Cup.

Yes, the World Cup - Those few weeks that come only once every four years where I eschew my usual disinterest in the television and instead become glued to it, taking in game after game after game, removing my computer hardware reviewer hat and firmly placing a wannabe Andy Gray hat on my head instead. So yes, you could say I've been enjoying the feast of football so far... Indeed, as I write this I'm simply killing time until England kick off their final group game against Sweden. We've already qualified for the last sixteen, which takes the pressure off somewhat, but it's important for us to get a good performance under our belts after a couple of stumbling, pedestrian displays in our opening two games.

I've also been making the most of the sunshine to spend time chilling out with a good book, currently in the form of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore - A pretty excellent read so far. There's something I love about Murakami's ability to put plausible characters into surreal, bizarre situations which they then accept and thrive in without question - Somehow, I just find it reflective upon the attitudes of most in the real-world, a celebration of the human spirit if you will.

Music-wise, I'm currently sat about listening to Thom Yorke's first solo album, The Eraser, which isn't bad at all - I don't quite understand his feeling that it's all material that wouldn't suit Radiohead, as the vast majority of the album seems exactly like tracks that would suit Radiohead... Oh well, he's the boss, and there's some good stuff on the album so I won't complain. I also finally got arround to picking up Gnarls Barkley's album, St. Elsewhere - I wasn't expecting much beyond the hugely over-played by now Crazy, but again was pretty impressed. It's a hit and miss album, but the tracks that work do so damn well, so it gets my vote.

So, that sums up the past few weeks in a nutshell for me - TV, books, music, with review work slotting in nicely alongside it all. I just hope the rest of you guys and girls are enjoying the Summer so far as much as I am.

Dylan Moran

2006-06-01T22:34:00.001+01:00

Just this minute got back from seeing Dylan Moran's stand-up show live.... Absolutely fantastic, side-splitting stuff. I might write more about it some other time, but right now I have to go and tend to my pentagram. Of cheese.

Victory for the Comic Muse

2006-05-28T18:34:00.000+01:00

Well, it's 'Blog time again (otherwise known as that time when I try to avoid review work like the Plague ;) ) - Things are still pleasantly busy here, with plenty of articles to write, and another trip to London for an ATI briefing recently. As always, some interesting stuff was on offer, and it was good to catch up face-to-face with Rys again, however briefly.

We've also finally (although somewhat temporarily) transistioned across to our new-look front page at Elite Bastards, which is a sight for sore eyes and should help us both with promoting our own content and being ready for future improvements and the like. Aside from that, not much else to report on that front.

Book-wise, I finished reading The Da Vinci Code this week (Yes, I know I must be the last living person to read it!). In all honesty, I found the final stages of the book and its twist and turns too implausible to enjoy, so all in all it was a little disappointed. Still, it's back to my Haruki Murakami reading spree after this, which I would hazard a guess at being far more down my street if it's even a patch on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

Musically, far too much of my time has been spent listened to the new Boards of Canada EP, Trans Canada Highway, ad infinitum. Predictably, it's Boards of Canada so I love it. Today I got hold of a copy of the new Divine Comedy album (see this Blog entry title for its name!), which seems excellent from my first listen, almost like everything Morrissey's last album could have been but wasn't in some ways.

Arsenal lost the Champions League Final, but did their fans proud which in itself was more than I was hoping for. More importantly, the weekend before they claimed forth place in the Premiership and a Champions League spot for next season, deliciously at the expense of Tottenham. Henry is staying now too, so things are looking up again for the Gunners. :D

Finally, over the past week or so I've been somewhat taking stock of my life after everything that has gone on in the past year or so, and I came to a somewhat startling discovery - I'm actually happier now than I was a year ago. Love being blind and all that, a year ago I was largely fooling myself into thinking I'd found happiness, when in reality I was anything but. I used to go home from work every day wondering what mood swings or accusations would be thrown at me, I was constantly having to try and pick my way through the swathe of pathological lies fired in my direction, and I was unable to voice my own true opinions without being shouted down or risking the aforementioned mood swings or accusations - To put it simply, every day was a draining and stressful experience. Oh, and then there was copious periods of time listening to Bryan Ferry and pre-Avalon Roxy Music... How did I ever survive?!

Now, in contrast, I have the time to pursue my own ambitions rather than being expected to bolster someone elses, can listen to the music and watch the shows I like, and more importantly I'm surrounded by people who genuinely share my tastes in general, and have respect and time for my opinions. It's really quite liberating. Vive la difference!!! :D

Panic on the streets of Birmingham...

2006-05-14T10:20:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy time for me Elite Bastards-wise this past week (just for a change!) - Aside from continuing to plough through the ever-growing mountain of review hardware (with some pretty cool reviews coming up I have to say), the highlight of last week was a trip to Birmingham to cover the Computer Trade Show (aka CTS) for the site, complete with press pass of course...

Needless to say, the site name got some interesting reactions throughout the day. ;) Although the show was apparantly not as packed full of items of interest as last year's offering, there was still plenty to cover, and more importantly it gave me the chance to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of marketing people with regard to getting review samples (more work for me - Yay!). I had some productive discussions on that front, so we'll have to see how they pan out in the long run, and I had a few interesting meetings during the course of the day too.

It also looks like we've found ourselves a willing provider of samples for NVIDIA graphics boards, thanks to some insanely generous and decent fellow who keeps going around recommended us and fighting our corner whenever they talk to AIB partners... You know who you are, and you know how grateful I am for it. ;)

So, all in all, the site is continuing to move onwards and upwards, to the point where I'm seriously starting to need someone to help out with some of the review workload and to let us cover more products methinks. It's something I'm still mulling over though (I'm such a control freak sometimes!), so more on that soon no doubt...

Goodbye old friend...

2006-05-07T14:29:00.000+01:00

A few hours from now, Arsenal's close to 100 year stay at Highbury will finally come to an end, as they move on to a new stadium at Ashburton Grove next season after their final league game this afternoon. Every Gooner knows it's a necessity to progress as a football club, but I'm sure it won't stop most of us from missing the old place.

It was somewhat premature, but at least I got to say my goodbyes to the place last Summer, before it gets turned into flats and apartments in the next few months.

So many cherished memories...

You burn at both ends, yet still you're fine...

2006-04-27T21:20:00.000+01:00

I should start by explaining today's 'Blog title - It's a line from a song on Zero 7's rather excellent new album, The Garden. The song in question is a great one, and this particular line seems to capture how life is going for me right now. Why am I burning the candle at both ends you ask? Well, it's something to do with this little lot:

Yes, thats right, I have just one or two reviews and article to write at the moment. ;o) On top of that, I'm currently trying to finalise going to CTS in Birmingham in a couple of weeks (I have my press pass already), and also arrange some other cool things for Elite Bastards. As per usual of course, this isn't me complaining so much as loving life - Call me a masochist, but I'm loving the hectic lifestyle at the moment.

Aside from that nice little pile of work, all is well in the world - The new car is great, life is smooth and relaxed despite being so busy... Oh, and there's the ever so small matter of Arsenal reaching the Champions League final on Tuesday night. Apologies to anyone in a five mile radius of me that evening for the foul-mouthed tirades and uncontrolled shouts of joy coming from my vicinity, particularly during those heart-in-mouth final few minutes. Of course, I have to go through that whole trauma all over again in three weeks time, but I wouldn't swap it for anything - As someone who never thought I'd live to watch Arsenal play in a Champions League final, it really is a dream come true, win or lose on the night.

So, I think that covers everything going on in my world for now, so back to rifling through that pile of hardware...

My new baby!

2006-04-15T12:02:00.000+01:00

I just picked it up from the garage, and brought it home... My new pride and joy!

Apologies

2006-04-07T23:30:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to write a quick message here to all of you who expressed concern about my last Blog entry, and/or my lack of contribution in certain places as of late. The fact that people have even taken the time out to ask has been a real comfort to me, so thanks to all of you who had me in their thoughts. :)

Anyway, I think it's only fair to tell everyone the full story of what has been going on in recent months to help you all understand what's being going on in my private life as of late, so here's the scoop:

The whole thing started just after Christmas really - Me and Tara got talking again, she said she felt like she'd made a big mistake leaving the way she did, that things weren't going well and that she really regretted and was sorry for what she'd done.

So, over the past few months, we carried on talking, even met a couple of times. It came to a head a few weeks ago, when she said that she'd really like to get things back how they were. We started talking about how to go about things, when to do it, and so on.

Until a couple of weeks ago - I got an e-mail from her out of the blue, saying that she'd been thinking about things and had decided that she wanted a divorce after all. Later that week, she called and told me she wanted me to pay at least half of the divorce fees, and basically gave me a whole lot of attitude. Of course, I gave her some back, and said no way was I paying that much after everything she'd done, and the whole thing ended rather unpleasantly.

Eventually, she agreed to pay all of the fees if I paid for and organised the initial filing (which I have to do, she can't because it was her who commited adultery), and has left it all up to me for now. Anyway, that's kind of beside the point.. The whole event has left me feeling all of the pain, anger and heartbreak of a few months ago all over again, only worse this time.

Mentally, I'm on the mend again, but it really was a big blow. So, thanks again for your support guys and girls (and you know who you are), it really has made a big difference to me bouncing back.

On a far more positive, and entirely unrelated, note; There's a new Boards of Canada EP being released in June. Can you say excited?!?!

As he faced the sun he cast no shadow...

2006-03-20T22:08:00.000Z

"As they took his soul, they stole his pride..."

Cold-blooded old times

2006-03-13T15:53:00.000Z

As per usual, I have to start a Blog entry with an apology as to the lack of updates. And, as per usual, I will also proceed to blame said lack of updates on being busy and so on - I've been spending quite a lot of time benchmarking for various articles recently, to the point where I've built up something of a minor backlog of actual reviews to write! I have a couple on the go right now, so if I can motivate myself sufficiently, then you might see them both this week. All this is on top of my latest review for Beyond 3D, covering ASUS' EN7800GT TOP Silent, which as I'm sure I've mentioned before is hard work but a joy to write for as a site, and I really can't feel much more proud of my efforts than when something I've written shows up on the front page of Beyond 3D.

Last week saw me pick up a nasty bout of 'flu, which laid me low for a fair while - There's nothing I hate more than my brain being willing but my body refusing point-blank to be of any use, so I'm not the most fun person to be around when I'm sick. Luckily I'm over that now, and fighting fit again.

Things have been a little strained in my personal life of late too, with things going on that I'm really not sure I can mention publically. Anyhow, it's reached the point now where I feel I'm being taken for a ride and used and abused to suit other people's designs right now, so I'm basically going to sit back, stop thinking about it, take my hands off the wheel, and see what happens. At the end of the day, there's only so much pain and upset I can take before I have to simply walk away from a situation, no matter how loathe I am to do so. :(

Anyway, aside from that there isn't a whole lot else to say... Back to Elite Bastards, things are finally coming along with the CMS, we've had one or two other cool things crop up (Not least Scott Davey's console-related articles, which are superb, and as mentioned in my last quick Blog entry, succeeded in getting us Slashdotted), so all in all we're making progress, although still not quite where I'd like things to be. Something to keep working towards is always good though.

Elite Bastards suffers the Slashdot effect...

2006-02-17T23:37:00.000Z

Need I say more...

Reasons I don't spend much time in the Elite Bastards IRC channel #401

2006-02-05T20:45:00.000Z

Topic is ' don't leave me alone here Quinn... arghh!!!!! * Hanners has left #sextorture *'

;)

Deadlines met, time to chill out a little...

2006-01-29T11:46:00.001Z

As ever, I have to start this Blog entry by apologising for the lack of updates, but recent weeks have given me little to no time to sit down and do anything unrelated to work in some shape or form.

Thankfully, the results of all that hard work are now in the public domain, in the form of my 3DMark06 and Radeon X1900 XTX reviews. Despite how much I may moan about the amount of hours I had to put in on those two projects in this post, I can't really cover up the fact that I loved every minute of it... Playing with, testing and getting to grip with a new version of 3DMark is always an educational and informative experience, and it goes without saying to anyone who shares my level of geekiness that getting to find out about and then try out a new high-end video card is pretty much on top of the thrill-o-meter.

I won't wax too much lyrical about my day in London for the R580 briefing, but it was cool to catch up with Rys again (properly this time!), get to meet Dave Baumann at last (after I somehow missed him last time around, even though he was apparantly only sitting a couple of seats away at the AVIVO briefing in December!) and also meet Gary Jones, Club 3D's legendary lifesaver (to me anyway!) in the flesh, as well as a bundle of other people.

Anyway, after my exertions on those two articles I've been taking something of a breather for a few days to regain my composure - I have a few things I wouldn't mind investigating on the back of my recent work, so I'll probably plunge into something during next week. We also have a couple of other articles coming up which could prove pretty interesting too, but both of those are out of my hands. :)

Outside of Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - Work has been somewhat busy lately, and I have a pay/performance review coming up, which will doubtless end in disappointment. I could really do with a week off soon, but I'm not sure if and well I'll get that sorted. I'm also looking at forking out a bundle of money on my car in the next few weeks, with an MOT coming up and it being in dire need of replacement brake pads. Truth be told, I really want to find myself something newer and better, but at the moment I just don't have the money in the bank.

Belated Happy New Year

2006-01-06T12:27:00.000Z

So, here we are - 2006. Still no hover cars, teleporters, Transformers arriving from 1986... All pretty boring isn't it?! I'm not much of a New Year person in all honesty, I don't buy into a lot of the ideas of making resolutions, clean slates and the like - For me, it's just a continuation of what went before, and if there are things you want to change about yourself or your life, then you should be doing it when you realise that something's wrong, not because there's a new number in the year. But, there you go, I'm just a killjoy like that.. ;o)

Having said that, the start of a New Year always seems to be a good opportunity to set new targets and review any you've made before. As far as Elite Bastards goes, I really feel we've made progress, even just in the last couple of months - I won't bore you with statistics, but we're slowly beginning to draw in more readers on a regular basis, and certainly our 'big' articles are getting more exposure, which can only be a good thing. To continue that growth, what we need is content, content, content, and good quality content at that. We certainly should have a couple of big hitting articles showing up in the coming weeks, and I'm really hoping (with some work on my part too) that said articles will help to snowball the reputation of the site as one worth reading and/or dealing with. On that matter, I saw something over the Christmas period which brought a huge grin to my face, but you guys will see it soon enough (If you haven't already for the chosen few ;o)).

The only fly in the ointment which I was hoping would be done and dusted by the time we entered 2006 is the lack of our new Content Management System, as we're at the point where doing things as we are currently is holding us back. Hopefully we'll get something together sooner rather than later though.

On a final point of Elite Bastards business, I'll be off to London one day next week. And that's all I can say on the subject right now.

Away from web site goings-on, my Christmas and New Year was pretty cool, but quiet. Killer present of the year for me was a DAB digital radio, which has seen me glued to BBC 6 Music whenever I get the opportunity - It's almost like they can read my mind and pick up my musical tastes whenever I tune in, it's uncanny.

As for what 2006 holds for me personally? Well, there are some intriguing happenings at the moment, so even I don't know where I'm going to end up by the time the year is out.

Did I say I was going to take a break...

2005-12-23T21:03:00.000Z

..over Christmas? Scratch that - Something very cool has just fallen into my lap which is going to take up a fair bit of time... ;o)

This is redirected mail...

2005-12-18T21:14:00.000Z

Been a little while since I've made a proper Blog entry, things have been pretty busy the last few weeks, so there's a few things to catch up on.

Firstly, the Friday before last saw me attend my first ATI press event, a briefing in London about CATALYST 5.13 and AVIVO (The fruits of which you can read here). Hanging out with all the guys from the UK press was both overwhelming and daunting and very cool all at the same time - It's quite a head trip to meet those familiar names from the community like Fudo from The Inquirer and Rys from HEXUS (Who I probably owe some money for referring to Elite Bastards as 'the best domain name ever' at least half a dozen times in a ten minute period of introducing me to people ;)), as well as a handful of ATI guys like Andrzej, Godfrey and Richard Huddy. So, apart from feeling like the new boy in class amongst all those old hands, it was great to be part of the 'inner circle' as it were, and I'm hoping it won't be my last outing on the circuit. Now, if only NVIDIA would give me the time of day...

The big down side of the day was that I had to make a dash for the door pretty much as soon as the briefing was over (which meant I managed to miss getting a chance to say hi to Dave Baumann - D'oh!), to get back home and complete packing everything to move out of my old place early Saturday morning. Luckily, everything went smoothly (apart from breaking the sofa, which I didn't need anyway), and by Saturday evening all of my stuff was either back at my parents place or safely incarcerated in storage. Now, a week on, everything is just dandy, with my room here looking great and all my IT needs set up perfectly (better than it ever was at the bungalow). It's a big weight off my mind getting out of that dump and back here, and now I'm looking forward to entering 2006 with a renewed focus on the things that are important to me.

The past week has involved mainly sorting out the final parts of the move (mainly redirecting post, changing addresses for credit card bills and the like, hence the subject name from a Dubstar B-side), as well as working on the AVIVO article whenever I could. Saturday morning involved a race around the shops to sort out all of my Christmas shopping, which I sorted out with surprising ease. Then today has seen me working my arse off benchmarking a couple of boards to try and get the review out of the door before Christmas, as well as putting some sheen on a review from one of the other guys which should see the light of day in the next day or two. Once I'm done with writing up the video card review, there's one other short item I'd like to delve into before Christmas hits, after which I might even shock myself by taking a bit of a break for a few days (Although knowing me something else will pop up and grab my attention, and before I know it I'll be hammering away at another article).

Which brings me to tonight, and finally some proper time to kick back and relax by updating my Blog while listening to the new Belle and Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit - An excellent CD, possibly their best yet. Great stuff to chill out to.

Blog additions

2005-12-08T21:46:00.000Z

Just thought I'd point it out for the less eagle-eyed amongst you - I've added a couple of things to the sidebar of this Blog in recent weeks. First up is the current state of play in my 'real' work Fantasy Football team (That's soccer to you American types). I was the office champion last season in a nail-biting finish, taking the overall lead by a meagre few points in the final week of the season. As you can see, my team (Fake Madrid, they'll always be in bold) have made a decent start to the season, and are currently sitting pretty at the top of the table. It's going to be tight though, so no room for complacency. ;)

The other item which I've added tonight is courtesy of music profiling site (and all-round 'cool thing') Last.FM, which now allows you to add HTML images showing your latest statistics wherever you please. So, I figured it would be cool to add a couple to my Blog sidebar, so you can see what tracks and artists I've been listening to for the past seven days. :o)

Anyway, I should have some cool and interesting things to write about in the coming few days, so keep your eyes peeled!

Dancing, laughing, drinking, loving...

2005-11-30T22:16:00.000Z

Apologies for the lack of Blog updates, it's been a busy time for me lately. Focusing on recent events, last Friday was my new friend Katie's birthday, so I went out with her and a bunch of her friends for a night of drunken debauchery. Okay, so it wasn't quite like that... I wasn't drunk. ;o) That was then followed by waking up early(ish) the next morning to decorate what will become my room back at my parents place. Things are finally getting towards a manageable state on the move front, I'm pretty much organised apart from a handful of minor obstacles. Be warned though, I might be left without Internet access for a little while during the following few weeks, so don't worry if I disappear off the face of the planet for a while - I'll be back.

Things are equally busy on other fronts - Last week saw Beyond 3D publish my review of a couple of Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO boards, as you've probably already seen. It's always a pleasure to do some work for Dave, and the feeling of having an article up at a site which is quite simply the pinnacle of 3D hardware knowledge always gives me a real glow of achievement - It's kinda like being on Mastermind or something. ;o)

There's been no respite at Elite Bastards either - I published my review of the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO² there today (What is it with me and those boards?!), and I should be having a couple of graphics boards show up in the next day or two for review, which should keep me juggling moving and benchmarking in an... 'Interesting' fashion. God knows how I'll pull it off, especially seeing as I have another little project that I think some of you will like that I want to sort out in the next couple of days.

The best news on the EB front lately was being shown a piece of what can only be described as 'fan mail' from someone pretty high up the hierachy at a well-known company. A quick e-mail in his direction, and things could be getting far more interesting on the sample and information front for us, all being well. So, hopefully we might be able to provide some far more comprehensive coverage of product launches very soon, fingers crossed. :o)

Having said that, the 'best news' moniker has been stolen away from that information these past couple of days, by the fact that a couple of our forum members have dug into their own pockets to donate to the site. It may sound overly emotional, but it puts a lump in my throat thinking that people are willing to part with their own hard-earned cash, entirely of their own free will, to fund our little Internet adventure. I've put a lot of time and work into various facets of the site over my time with Elite Bastards, but it's always been primarily for my own satisfaction and enjoyment (as well as helping out and empowering our readers, obviously) over any financial gain. So, it really means a lot that people think that we're worth something in cold, hard cash. That may sound weird, but that's just me.

Anyway, that's my quick catch up Blog for the day, I'm sure I've missed loads of stuff, but I'll hopefully be able to keep you all filled in during the run-up to Christmas, Internet connection permitting. :o)

In a word... Argh!!

2005-11-15T19:40:00.000Z

I think this explains it all.

Right now, my house has no power, and hasn't done since about 11am this morning. So, I'm sat here at my parents right now typing away from my laptop. Which is fine, except I have a bunch of news to post that I can't get to as it's stored away in Outlook on my main computer, and some work on an article for an NDA which expires tomorrow that is also out of bounds until the power comes back, which won't be until tomorrow morning some time.

Technology is great... Until the power goes out. :P

Fitter, happier, more productive...

2005-11-14T13:30:00.000Z

After my solely geek-related last entry, I figured I should really dedicate a post to how I'm doing right now. And the answer is - Pretty damn good. I'm sleeping better, exercising more (yes, that's right, exercise - I'm going for runs every evening, slowly building my fitness and stamina back to somewhere close to where they were a few years back), eating better, and generally doing well all round.

I move out of my place almost exactly a month from now, so a fair bit of my time has been taken up with trying to arrange everything - Clearing things out at my parents place, clearing things out here, arranging storage for the stuff I can't bring with me, decorating, and so on. But I'm really looking forward to leaving the dump I call my house now - It doesn't hold any real use for me now, so I can't wait to get the burden of it and bad memories that go with it off my hands. All of this has eaten up a fair bit of my reviewing and writing time, but don't worry, normal service will be resumed soon enough.

Anyway, it isn't all hard work for me - Friday night, my good friend Gemma came down from Southampton for the night, firstly to catch up on everything (I haven't seen her in the flesh in forever!) and secondly to take what would have been Tara's place going to see Jimmy Carr (a British stand-up comic, for you non-UK people) as I'd booked the tickets several months ago. If you like old-school gags and joke telling, and aren't easily offended, then it's great stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed it...

"I went to Ask Jeeves the other day. I asked Jeeves... Why is Google so much better?"

Then, of course, Saturday was the England - Argentina friendly, and one of the best games of football I've had the pleasure to witness (Helped of course by the fact that England won - Just). I've also been dedicating some 'me' time to ploughing through watching Lost - I got fed up of waiting each week for episodes in the UK to air, so I went off and found the US episodes. I finished Season One last night, so I'll probably start off the second series tonight. Good, intriguing stuff indeed.

Anyway, this seems as appropriate a place as any to finish with a word of thanks to all of you who've comiserated me, talked to me, worried about me or helped me out over the past few weeks, every one of your comments and thoughts were much appreciated. As you can hopefully see though, I'm doing just fine. ;o)

System upgrade time

2005-11-09T14:00:00.000Z

Now I have more time and money afforded to me, and thanks to some irritating instability of my Pentium 4 system (When I say irritating, I mean random hardware-related reboots irritating, not stupid little application error irritating), I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and put some thought into upgrading my system. I wanted to build a machine that would last me into the future (Like that ever happens!), so here's what I ended up with.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+: As with many people right now, when it came to choosing a CPU my mind was caught between going for stellar single core performance, or more modest performance on a dual core platform. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that much of my time is spent on the desktop . On a quiet day, I'll have Outlook, Firefox and Azureus running, but it isn't unusual to have a lot more going on at one time - Take last night for instance, where in addition to the aforementioned applications I also had Excel, Frontpage, WinAmp, Paint Shop Pro, Notepad and a host of Windows Explorer windows open at one time. So, I opted to go dual core, and I haven't regretted it one iota - If the move to a HyperThreading capable CPU was a boost, the move to dual core is a giant leap. It's something you need to experience for yourself rather than have it explained to you, but things feel smooth!

Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard: Picking a motherboard was an easy choice for me - I've been using the 'vanilla' A8N-SLI in my test system for some time without issue, with my only niggle being the annoyingly loud southbridge fan. The A8N-SLI Premium removes this issue thanks to a passively cooled southbridge, and throws in BIOS-level SLI switching as an added bonus. A stable, decent performing motherboard with all the features I wanted at a decent price made this a more than obvious choice.

2x BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC vieo cards (SLI): When it came to picking a video card, the decision was made easy for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I already had one of these boards sat around waiting for review, so picking up a second identical card gave me the opportunity to run an SLI configuration for a real pixel-pushing behemoth. Secondly, much as I would have loved a Radeon X1800-based board to partake in anti-aliased floating point blending abilities and other feature packed goodness with, the price difference between an X1800 XL and the £200 BFG board was too much to stomach - The price:performance ratio of this part is simply unbeatable right now. And boy do these things perform! I don't remember having such a tingly feeling playing games since I moved from a Radeon 8500 to 9700 PRO some years ago - F.E.A.R. at 1280x960 with 4x AA, 8x AF and everything on maximum (Yesy, that includes soft shadows!) is a sight to behold, as was Call of Duty 2 last night at 1280x1024, 4x AA and 8x AF with everything maxxed out.

Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card: This was the biggest 'luxury' on my list, and to be honest I really haven't stretched its legs yet, but I felt that my old Audigy board was ageing and could probably do with something later and greater to take its place. The X-Fi certainly seems to have its share of nifty tools, and I haven't noticed any performance impact from sound effects in-game as I did on occasion with the Audigy, so I can't complain. The only downside right now is that I've found it impossible to get the optical output working, but that's a whole other story.

2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 RAM (CAS 2): We seem to be rapidly approaching a world where 1GB of RAM won't cut it, so this seemed as good a time as any to make the move to 2GB of memory. It's hard to appreciate how much difference the added RAM is making in the context of the whole system, but certain things certainly seem nippier when in the past there'd be a bout of hard disk thrashing, so I'd like to think it's done some good.

Enermax 535W SLI power supply: It's a power supply, and even I can't get excited about that! It has all the connectivity I need, adjustable fan speed, and it just works, which is all I ask of it. If it doesn't blow up and kill or electrocute me, then it's a good unit in my book.

So, there you have it - A little time and a lot of money later, I'm left with a system that I can be more than proud of - It performs great, feels responsive, and makes gaming more enjoyable than I remember in a long time... Mission accomplished!!

Big changes, familiar faces - The future of Elite Bastards

2005-10-27T11:30:00.000+01:00

I mentioned a couple of days ago I'd reserve a separate post for some Elite Bastards-related goodness, so here is the news as promised.

As of Sunday, I officially took over the financial support of Elite Bastards. I now pay the bills and the server is in my name so, officially speaking, I'm the new owner (and/or Editor-in-Chief if you prefer) of the site. This won't really have any obvious impact on the day-to-day running of the site - Zarathustra will still do his thing when the server needs it, Quinn is still webmaster and all round 'making things look pretty' guy, and I'll be churning out news and content as much as possible. The big change really is that obviously running a web site such as ours isn't always a cheap business, and my recently changed circumstances mean that I can offer the site both the time and financial stability it requires to grow and prosper - Good news I'm sure you'll agree.

My first act after making this change was to sort out an issue that has plagued the site for some time - Its lack of RAM. I'm sure many of you have noticed periods of slowness or inaccessibility after new articles had been published, and this was due to the lack of memory required to handle a large number of concurrent connections. I've now had the amount of RAM in the server upgraded from 512MB to a much healthier 1.5GB, and even before we've tweaked the configuration of the server to make the most of this new memory things are looking far smoother. Our next priority is to move to a new Content Management System, but I wouldn't want to say when that'll be finished, seeing as it was originally slated for this Summer. ;o) Beyond that, I have a few ideas of things I'd like to see happen at the site, but that's one for the future.

To close, I'm sure you'll all join me in thanking Zarathustra for the considerable time and money he's ploughed into the site thus far, without which we wouldn't be here right now. And of course, thanks to all of the staff for their contributions to the development of Elite Bastards.

I'm always open to suggestions as to improvements or changes to the site from any angle, so if anyone ever has any ideas, you know where to find me.

It's my birthday, no-one here day, very strange day...

2005-10-24T21:00:00.000+01:00

If the subject title isn't clue enough, today is my 26th birthday. It isn't quite the day I was expecting it to be a few weeks ago, but oddly enough I feel very content about the whole thing. It's been pretty much an ordinary day spent at work, then coming home to cook myself a fantastic meal (If I may say so myself! I tend to hugely downplay my abilities in the kitchen due to the simple fact that I don't really like cooking), just generally relaxing for a bit, and soon I'll be settling down with a stack of anime and a bottle of wine. I really can't find cause to complain about that... :oP

Aside from Tara leaving at the end of last week, I was also saddled with a nightmarish cold (Which still hasn't disappeared completely) which has left me pretty drained for a few days now. Thankfully, it didn't stop me crawling out of bed to deal with answers to an interview I organised some time ago. It turned out to be one of the best, most well-received articles I can remember at Elite Bastards, which is always pleasing, although to be honest most if not all of the credit should go to Voudoun and John Reynolds for their work in compiling the questions. Let's be honest, it's the questions and answers people read these things for, not any nonsense I spout by way of an introduction! There is another point of Elite Bastards business which should be mentioned here, but I'll save it for another day and another post as it's too important (to my mind) to bury in with everything else. It's good news though, mark my words. :o)

The joint mess of separation and cold have meant not a lot of benchmarking has been done lately, and to make things worse when I did go to crack on with it yesterday my test rig which I was trying to rebuild was playing up something chronic. I've left it to it's own devices today, but tomorrow I'll attack it with vigour to hopefully get back on track. What makes it more frustrating is that my current testing project isn't even for Elite Bastards at all, but for another site I've written for in the past, that doesn't begin with H. ;o) Ah well, fingers crossed it'll behave tomorrow.

Anyway, enough rambling from me for today. Now, where's that bottle opener...

Everything changes... Everybody hurts

2005-10-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

I'll keep this post short and to the point, as it isn't something I want to dwell on - My wife has left me for another guy, and is moving out of our house on Thursday. To make things worse, the guy in question didn't know she was married, and in fact still doesn't believe the fact despite my protestations to him. So, it came down to a simple 'Me or him' scenario, and Tara chose him.

So, that's it... It's over. I'll be moving back into my parents place as soon as possible, a move which will actually have previously unforseen benefits for Elite Bastards. Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining, I suppose...

"When the truth dies...

2005-10-14T13:03:00.000+01:00

...very bad things happen"...

A productive few days

2005-10-10T17:15:00.000+01:00

It's been a pretty busy time for me Elite Bastards-wise one way or another lately, but Tara was away in Southampton visiting a couple of friends at University there over the weekend, which left me as master of the domain and thus offered me the opportunity to plough through editorial, which I grabbed with both hands. At the tail end of last week I squeezed out a technology preview of ATI's Radeon X1000 series, which turned out pretty well I thought if I may say so myself. This left me the weekend to focus on a couple of articles - Firstly, a review of Club 3D's Radeon X800RX, which I published today, and another piece which should go live later in the week. With any luck this should let me refocus on the GeForce 7800GT review, but I get the feeling that more distractions will be coming along soon. They should be good distractions though, so don't worry. ;o)

Away from writing-related stuff, I took some time on Saturday to chill out and watch the England game (althought the words 'chill out' and 'England game' invariably fail to gel particularly well in the same sentence), and also did a little catching up anime wise, taking in the latest episodes of Bleach and Full Metal Panic : The Second Raid as well as continuing to work my way through the first series of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Upon Tara's return on Sunday afternoon we also sat down to watch Sin City together, and I have to say the second viewing was at least on a par with the first. It's still my movie of 2005 so far, no doubt about that.

Continuing the movie theme, I went to see A History of Violence with the wife last weekend - Not a bad movie, and decent entertainment, although to be honest I think I enjoyed it more than Tara did. Music-wise, I'm still hopelessly addicted to the new Boards of Canada album, The Campfire Headphase... I'm not even going to attempt to desribe its musical genius, you just have to find it and listen to it anyway you can. It's quite possibly one of the best albums I've ever heard. Period.

Weekend away et al

2005-09-28T17:15:00.000+01:00

As most of you reading this will doubtless have already noticed, I got back from my short break on Monday afternoon. Those handful of days in Wales were definitely much needed to recharge my batteries, and just spend some time relaxing and chilling out - It was really nice to just have some time between me and Tara, with little in the way of the other distractions that tend to crop up in day-to-day life. I might put together a slideshow of pictures from the trip as an MSN Spaces slideshow to bore you all with some time, so be warned! ;o)

Thankfully I also have all of this week off work, so it's meant plenty of sleeping in, and has also given me time to finish off the Radeon X800GT review I started before I went away for Elite Bastards. If you're interested, I've just gone live with it here. I should be starting the mammoth task of my GeForce 7800GT review next, so don't be surprised if you find me rocking in a corner muttering 'No more benchmarks, no more benchmarks...' any time soon. ;o)

Away from all things Elite Bastards, there isn't much to report - I'm ridiculously obsessed with the new Boards of Canada album right now, which is quite frankly one of the best things I've heard. Ever... Not to mention being strangely cathartic and inspirational at the same time to my writing. This weekend I should also be going to see A History Of Violence with the wife - It looks good from the trailer I've seen, so I hope it doesn't disappoint.

So, there you have it, everything I can think of to say for now. :o)

Romantic and relaxing weekends

2005-09-22T17:00:00.000+01:00

Well, this week is turning out to be a mixed one for me thus far. On the down side, I have a nasty cold right now, and if there's one thing I hate with a passion it's feeling ill. I've been fighting it all week, but today it finally got the better of me to the point of pissing me off.

However, the good news is that I have the next week and a half off work - Whoo-hoo!! What's even better is that tomorrow I'm leaving for a long weekend in South Wales with my wife, which should be a fabulously relaxing break for both of us. No laptops, no mobiles, just the two of us in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, you can't get better than that. :o) I can't help but think of it as a kind of belated honeymoon, seeing as we didn't have anything of the sort when we got married in Las Vegas last year, and tied the knot in our last couple of days there.

Last weekend was also a pleasant one spent with the wife - On Saturday afternoon I took her to see AFC Bournemouth play for the first time, in what turned out to be an incident-packed game. Very enjoyable indeed, although an hour to get out of the car park was not so much so! Also, any facility which thinks that £3.40 for two bottles of Coke is reasonable needs their heads examining. Note to self - Smuggle in your own drinks next time! On Sunday, we went and spent some time with my parents and had a great meal there as always, and the majority of the rest of the weekend was just spent chilling out together. A simple but enjoyable time, and a great reminder of why I love spending time with Tara so much. :o)

Moving off in to the World of Elite Bastards, I've been working on testing for a Radeon X800 GT review most of this week - The benchmarks and the like are all done, so it's just a case of putting the actual content together when I get back from my break away. Perhaps a little more excitingly however, I've finally gotten my hands on a GeForce 7800-based board - Don't expect to see a review quickly for this one though, I intend on covering every angle I can with a fine-toothed comb. :o) I need to get hold of a relevant part to compare it to as well, but that's all in hand... :oP

I think that just about covers everything, I just wanted to get a few things down before I leave for Wales bright and early tomorrow. I'll be sure to tell you all about it, and bore you with pictures of fields and sheep, when I return early next week! ;o)

One year ago today...

2005-08-31T09:00:00.000+01:00

Today's Blog post is a simple one, no talk of work or computer hardware.

One year ago today, I got married. This post is just to share the occasion of our first wedding anniversary with anyone who cares to listen, and to thank Tara for making me so happy and just generally making me a better person, not just for the past year but for the four years we've known one another in one way, shape or form.

I know she almost certainly isn't going to read this, but it really doesn't matter - I just want to shout out to the World that, right now, I'm still the happiest man alive, just as I was a year ago today. There are so many memories that I cherish, and still many more yet to be created. I really don't think I could be any more content. :)

On the hardware trail....

2005-08-12T19:42:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in my last Blog post, I don't think an entry goes by where I don't tantalise you in one way or another about great things to come at Elite Bastards. This past week, however, has proved to be a bumper week for 'Things you should probably get excited about'.

Aside from my break while working full-time for HEXUS, I've been with Elite Bastards in some kind of staff capacity for over two years now, and in that time we've grown. A lot. Not just in traffic and forum numbers I'd like to think, but also in maturity and nous. Sure, we still screw up and make mistakes, and we still don't always handle things as well as we perhaps should, but as a whole we've learned one Hell of a lot, and I'd like to think that it's all filtered down into a better experience for our visitors.

Anyway, I think any hardware site worth its salt reaches a point of critical mass where manufacturers and companies start to sit up and pay attention when you request something from them, rather than simply hit the 'Delete' key. And I believe that this week has demonstrated that we are now beginning to take on that critical mass. I'm not going into details until I have concrete hardware in my hands, but what I will say is that this week has been a boon with regard to relations with several hardware manufacturers. There's one deal in particular which I'm really excited about that's been verbally agreed for some time, but now appears to be reaching that final stage of actually getting review samples, but I've also had a number of very fruitful conversations that look exceedingly likely to help bring more reviews and content to you guys. Like I say, I won't promise anything until I have it sat in front of me, but I have a very good feeling about the way things are going.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'll be sitting back and resting on my laurels - Indeed, it's going to require even more commitment and effort on my part to make things work out and prove that we've got what it takes to be up there with the regulars when it comes to the sample-winning lottery.

So, watch this space, and carry on telling me and the rest of the staff what is good, what is bad, and what you want more of, and I'll keep on doing everything in my power to try and secure the latest and coolest hardware to review. I know I won't always get it, but it won't ever stop me from trying. :)

It's been a while...

2005-07-27T09:47:00.000+01:00

My God, I haven't updated this in an age!! :oO

To be honest, the reason why is that I really don't have much to report at the moment, things are just ticking along without anything too spectacular happening. Maybe I'll have some more exciting things to say in the next two or three weeks, but we'll have to see on that count. :oP (I feel like I always say this in every Blog entry, but nothing seems to come of it all that often!)

Elite Bastards is.... Well, Elite Bastards. As always, things in the pipeline, a pile of as yet unreviewed hardware on my desk, and hopefully bigger, better things to look forward to (Although still no 7800 GTX!). At the moment I'm working on an article on NVIDIA's SLI anti-aliasing, which to be honest is probably one of the most in-depth things I've done in a while. It's shaping up pretty nicely though, and if I'm disciplined I might just get it done and dusted by the end of this week.

Away from all that, last week saw me take a week of work, which turned out to be very relaxing - It was great to be able to spend a full week with Tara, on days out or just lounging around. It really recharged my batteries somewhat, so hopefully I'll be able to take another week or so in September to enjoy some more time away from the office and all of the boredom that entails. :oP And yes, that is me admitting that I miss full-time hardware reviewing. ;o)

Weird dreams and the 7800

2005-06-25T12:27:00.000+01:00

I knew there was something I'd forgotten about in my last Blog entry, and now I've remembered it...

You know you're thinking about video cards way too much when you end up dreaming about them at night. Yep, that's right, I had a GPU-related dream... About SLI to be more precise. The weirdest part is, there weren't actually video cards in my dream, SLI seemed to be represented by two snakes - One was green and one was blue. I'm not sure what they were doing exactly, but people around me were clearly referring to them being together as some form of SLI. No, I don't know what it means subconsciously either. And no, I wasn't smoking anything.

Looking at more of the GeForce 7800 GTX reviews around the web the past few days has made me realise two things:

1. I really want one to review
2. I need a monitor with a higher maximum resolution than 1600x1200

I'm not sure quite why I have such an urge to check one out right now considering that there isn't a lot new feature-wise to see on it (Transparancy anti-aliasing aside), I guess I'm just a whore for new hardware. Oh well, I'll just cross my fingers and see what comes up. :o)

On a final note, why does the rain always seem to wait until the weekend? :o| At least I've finally gotten around to booking some time off work about a month from now, which means you guys either won't be seeing very much of me between the 18th-22nd July, or you'll be seeing an insane amount of me while I plough through content aplenty. I wouldn't hold your breath for the latter though. ;o)

Longest day (+ 1)

2005-06-22T16:44:00.000+01:00

Well, it doesn't feel like almost a month since my last Blog post, but apparantly it is so... Oops.

The World of Elite Bastards has been full of some somewhat exciting happenings recently. NVIDIA didn't answer any of my e-mails trying to get hold of G70 information, but thankfully that didn't stop me getting hold of it all anyway. :o) Hopefully my efforts might stand me in better stead with them next time around, although I won't hold my breath. I've also put a little time into trying to build up relationships with AIB partners of (specifically NVIDIA) at the moment, and have hopefully made some steps in the right direction.

More importantly, the other even more exciting thing at EB which I'm nurturing has moved another step closer to fruition - I can chase it down a little more now the G70 article is out of the way, so hopefully soon I can start talking about it a little more. There's also a third 'pretty cool' thing which is a bit of a work-in-progress content wise, so hopefully that can move towards its actual 'getting an article together' stage soon. On top of all that, I still have a fair old pile of hardware to review, and quite probably at least one item to give away to a lucky reader!

Finally, Quinn is currently working on a Content Manaagement System for the site - It looks like a dream to me right now, with everything I need and then some. Again, hopefully that's something we can start showing off sooner rather than later once we've got it how we want it.

Away from EB, I saw Sin City, and it was the single most fantastic movie of the year so far. I'm not even going to bother waxing lyrical about it, just go and see it for yourself if you haven't already. War of the Worlds is the next movie on mine and Tara's 'to see' list, so we'll probably go and catch that on its opening weekend.

This past Saturday I was in London with the wife, being cultured and stuff - We went to Tate Modern to catch the Frida Kahlo exhibit going on there. Some fantastic works of art on show there, I was seriously impressed. We also spent some time shopping (Well, her shopping and me paying), and I also took her to see my spiritual home for the first time - Highbury, current home of Arsenal football club that is. She has a hugely embarrassing picture of me acting like an idiot in front of it as her current desktop backdrop, but no, I'm not going to let any of you see it. Ever. It would have been a perfect day, had it not been so damned hot! Pushing through crowds of sweaty people on the tube in the heat quickly loses its novelty value, I can tell you.

I'm sure there were a load of other things I meant to add here, but I can't think of them. Who knows, mabe it'll stand me in good stead when it comes to updating this thing more frequently?

Moving on up

2005-05-31T15:44:00.000+01:00

Not a lot to report, but I felt like I really should put something in my Blog to close off the month.

I'm nearly finished with my GeForce 6600GT review. Honest. Well, kinda. Hopefully I'll be done with it this week, if not I should be lynched. Away from that, I knocked out a brief CrossFire preview today to keep up with the Joneses. I'm also sat on some other pretty interesting information that I can't talk about, plus another opportunity for Elite Bastards that I'm very excited about. It could be a great stride forward for us as a site, and also pull us out in some new and intriguing directions. I don't want to reveal anything until I actually have guarantees in hand, but I'll keep you guys posted. :o) While we're talking EB gossip, the coming weeks will hopefully see the beginning of a redesign of the site. Again, I'm excited, although I do need to sit down and put the suggestions people have made together into a cogent plan on things we should look at doing.

Away from the site, things have been ticking along pretty reasonably. Arsenal won the FA Cup, and very undeservedly so, work is busy (But never too busy ;o)) and I have both the new Coldplay and Royksopp albums (Both of which I'm undecided on as far as my 'like-o-meter' goes). Went and saw Star Wars: Episode 3 on the opening night - I think my wife enjoyed it more than me, but it was still the best of the latest trilogy by far. To my shame, I laughed at one point where I was supposed to be upset... My wife will never let me near children again now I fear. :o( We'll probably try to catch Sin City this weekend (Yes, the UK sucks for movie releases), although I have a nasty feeling it's going to be a case of style over substance.

As a final point, I need a holiday - Anywhere know of a good place to stay in Wales, in the Cardiff area preferably?

Don't Believe The Truth

2005-05-12T16:55:00.000+01:00

Well, the main URL to my Blog is finally fixed after seemingly vanishing for a while - It turns out all I had to do was republish it, but I've been too lazy to do so until today. :oP

Not a great deal else to comment on really, life is just ticking along as per usual. On the Elite Bastards side of things, work is piling up - I have three video card reviews on the go now!! :oO Again, laziness is largely to blame, but hopefully I'll knuckle down to at least one of the reviews soon, I really want to get my look at a GeForce 6600GT out of the door soon. Fingers crossed I may be able to take a look at SLI in the coming months as well!

The other reason for my lack of working on EB content has been building a PC for my Dad, who has finally (scarily) decided to enter the information age. I'll be installing the whole set up at the weekend, but I'm mightily impressed with what I've been able to put together for him for just £350 - A Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 512MB of RAM, top-of-the-range NEC DVD writer (Another item which is kind of on my 'to review' list, I have a second unit available to me) and a 17" TFT. Despite being packed into a cheap case it all looks pretty sweet, so I hope he'll be impressed. And, more importantly, I hope he won't keep breaking things, I think I'll set up Remote Assistance on it just in case. ;o) It also managed to impress the wife with my PC building skills ('You managed to build a pretty PC from that box of stuff that got delivered yesterday?', she swooned :oP), which is always good. ;o)

Today's entry title comes from the name of the new Oasis album, which I finally got around to listening to last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by. It seems like a real break from all of their work before, it has a far more structured and melancholy feel to it rather than the usual 'anthemic' qualities of their stuff. I used to be a big Oasis fan, but was disappointed by everything post 'Be Here Now' - 'Don't Believe The Truth' feels like a true return to form for me. Talking music, I'm (im)patiently waiting for the new Coldplay album to make an appearance - In the meantime I've been listening to the new Gorillaz album (Not too bad) and a 2 CD live compilation of Kraftwerk stuff (Can't go wrong with them) to amuse myself. Oh, and the third OST to Naruto, which (in places) rocks. :o)

Today's Doctor Who episode...

2005-05-01T18:54:00.000+01:00

..Brought to you courtesy of Hanners....

Attack of the Zombie Bears

Will Firefox win the browser war?

2005-04-25T19:11:00.000+01:00

With all the hype surrounding Firefox in recent times, anyone would think that it was ready to conquer the mountain that is Internet Explorer in the next few months. Of course, that isn't the case, and to be honest I've poo-pooed the idea of Firefox taking any massive stranglehold in the browser market... Until last Thursday.

Last Thursday, as part of my job, I had to visit the home of one of the company I'm contracted out to's directors to fix a problem they had with dialling in to the work systems via Terminal Services. Now, this guy is clueless about computers, beyond the basics he's lost in a sea of technical jargon. But, I fire up this guys home PC, and what do I find as the default browser? Yep... Mozilla Firefox. On further questioning, I find that he'd read and heard from friends (Other relatively IT illiterate friends too) that it was a better, safer browser, and so he'd gone and installed it, was using it and (most importantly of all) enjoying the experience. If guys like this are getting the Firefox bug, then we really could be looking at a revolution in the browser wards. I was genuinely shocked by what I saw that day, but also very happy to see such things occuring.

In other news, me and Tara have been together for 43 months today!! I would use the term 'anniversary', but I know somebody reading this who wouldn't like it... :oP

A blast from the past

2005-04-18T19:47:00.000+01:00

I spent part of my morning at work today installing and configuring a CD-ROM drive on a Windows 3.11-based system - Talk about retro! It's been years since I've so much as touched Windows 3.1, I was pleasantly surprised that I remembered all the necessary items (as well as managing to remember the jumper configuration for an absolutely ancient 300MB Maxtor hard drive - How sad am I?!).

What really shocks me is that the company I work at still relies on these kinds of system and software which point blank refuses to run on anything over and above Windows 3.11. This is in-house software too, which people have had.. Oooh, over ten years to update - But do they? Do they Hell!! Nope, instead they bitch to the IT department about how we no longer allow such systems on our corporate network or how they're incompatible with our Active Directory setup. Ah well, c'est la vie....

Outside of that amusing distraction, life is cool enough really, minus some Elite Bastards-related stress today - Although the ending of the saga in question wasn't the ideal one from our point of view, hopefully it still leaves everybody relatively happy. Nothing is worth messing up friendships or burning bridges over is my philosophy, and I'd like to think it's served me well here. Now, what I really need is for someone to whip me around the skull with something heavy until I get to work on the review which is sat waiting for me. Perhaps they can whip me around the skull with a PCI Express GeForce 6800GT, I could do with one for a little while soon? :oP

My thoughts on bias and 'pay-offs'

2005-04-08T13:07:00.000+01:00

Well, The Inquirer certainly stirred up a hornets nest with their rant about the online hardware reviewing world - It's spawned threads here and there, and caused the likes of Anand from Anandtech no less to indirectly respond to some of Charlie Demerjian's thoughts in his Blog.

As someone who has reviewed hardware for three sites ranging from small to (albeit briefly) huge, I obviously have a fair few thoughts and some experience in the matter myself, so I figured I may as well put finger to keyboard and say a few words.

First up, Charlie mentions the dreaded NDA, something which, to be honest, nobody who wants to be on the forefront of the industry can go without signing. I've been under a few of these myself, and they can be a frustrating experience. Take ATI's HyperMemory launch, where a date was given for the NDA to expire upon its signature, which was then moved at the very last moment. Or 3DMark05, where the two major IHVs both released new 3DMark05 compliant drivers less than 24 hours before the NDA lifted for the benchmark. It's all about playing the PR game on the side of the companies involved (Although I'm not blaming FutureMark for the 3DMark05 issue, it was all down to ATI and NVIDIA), but at the end of the day it not only makes life difficult for us reviewers, it makes informing our readers as accurately as possible nigh-on impossible too. Carrying on with my 3DMark05 scenario, I had a massive number of benchmark results already recorded, and recreating all of these with two new drver sets would have been an impossible mission even had I been working full-time on said article. Thus, I was left with a dilemma as to whether to publish the article as is with 'old' results, or wait until I had the latest results available for the video cards I was using. In the end, I decided the article was more about 3DMark itself than the results, so I ran with it. Was I right to do so? I'm still not sure.

We witnessed a similar crisis around a number of sites this week with Intel's dual core Pentium Extreme Edition launch, which was pushed forward at the last minute. This left a lot of sites with half-baked, incomplete articles and no time to draw out the full picture either for themselves or their readers. Is that really helping anyone? Intel may feel it was a PR victory to introduce the first dual core parts to the community, but the subsequent rushed articles may well not have done the part the justice and fanfare it deserved. But who is to blame? Intel for moving the NDA expiry date, or the various web sites for rushing to comply with the change and release content early, rather than simply doing so 'when it's done'? Again, that's a question for others to answer, because I honestly can't say what I'd do in the same situation.

Which brings us to the more serious allegations, of bias and 'pay-offs' from vendors to certain sites, be they physical or psychological. I may be naive, but I find it very hard to believe that any online hardware sites are currently accepting money in return for positive reviews - In the past, maybe, but I can't imagine this kind of pratice going on in 2005.

A more 'psychological' form of being paid off however, I can believe. PR people are there to make the likes of us hardware reviewers feel like kings, while at the same time trying to ensure their products get positive press. This heady mix can often lead to journalists unwittingly becoming mouthpieces for a particular company, and end up with them being manipulated by a PR department without them even knowing it. These kinds of 'special relationship' are usually pretty easy to spot, and I'm sure even I don't need to name names for some of you to know the kind of thing I'm referring to. This is the reason why HEXUS tried to keep the vendors and reviewers as far away from one another as possible at all times, with all arrangements and information regarding hardware going through a central point - It stops these kind of relationships from forming, and thus helps to guarantee the impartiality of the individual reviewer. Of course, you can't separate the two entities completely, but the more the link is shortened the less of a problem it can be.

For me personally, the biggest issue in the reviewing community isn't bias, nor is it being 'paid off', but is in fact something which can often lead to accusations of either of these. No, the big problem is simply - Lack of knowledge. Think of the number of times you've read a review with a massive factual error around which its conclusions are based or, even worse, reviews which read in a horrifyingly similar fashion to the products press release. I often hear the 'f' word (fanboy) thrown at such reviews, but it seems to me that a lack of understanding is usually the key. And to be honest, it's perfectly understandable - While working at HEXUS I looked at a massive variety of products, and had to adapt to a lot of new things, and it really isn't easy - Indeed, I remember having to sit down for a good half hour one afternoon talking with another staff member over the basics of... Cooling fans. Not CPUs or video cards.. Cooling fans. If you really want to write great reviews, you need to know everything about everything, and however much you strive for it that status is, quite frankly, impossible.

There are no simple answers to these dilemmas for us as hardware reviewers, but things are much simpler for you readers out there - If you want to read about a particular subject, take in as many different articles from different sites about it as you can, and form your own opinions from what you've read. When you throw everyones ideas into the melting pot, chances are you'll be left with a far more complete picture of what you were reading about. It's why I link to every review I can find on Elite Bastards' front page when a product is launched - It isn't so people can click on the link for their favourite site, it's so they can take their fill of information about the product.

Weird times, but better times

2005-03-31T20:14:00.000+01:00

So, since my low point a couple of weeks ago, things have been much easier for me - I hesitate to use the word 'better', as it's really just involved me putting my worries and concerns on the back burner in the knowledge I have to deal with them, and soon.

The long weekend over Easter was fantastic though, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - Me and Tara didn't do anything all that special, but we spent the whole time hanging out together and generally enjoying one another's company and it made for a wonderful time, a real tonic after the weekend that had gone before.

Away from that, work has been ticking along at the usual pace. The most frustrating thing currently is that my work on content for Elite Bastards has basically stopped in its tracks, I've simply not had the willpower to do anything EB-related recently, but hopefully once all my problems are sorted then I can get back to churning out some more material.

Finally, I really have to thank everyone reading this who left words of support for me either here or through other means after my last entry - It means a lot to me to know I have you guys' support and friendship at a time like this, and I really appreciate and treasure it. So, thanks again, it's good to know there are people like you around. :o)

I had a bad weekend....

2005-03-21T09:22:00.000Z

Very bad... Probably life-changingly so. I really can't talk about it any more right now, but we'll see what happens over the coming days and weeks. Right now though I'm distraught, really I am. :o(

Time for a change

2005-03-18T11:33:00.000Z

I finally got bored of the old Blog template style I was using, so I've switched to a new one - It's simpler, but feels a bit neater and 'cleaner'. I guess you could also call it boring, but oh well... I'm not entirely convinced that anyone much reads this regularly anyway, although you're always welcome to prove me wrong with a plethora of comments. :oP

Playing catch up

2005-03-17T11:52:00.000Z

If there's one thing I haven't had much time for this past couple of months, it's been anime watching - My wife loves Japanese culture at least as much as me, but I haven't been able (OK, so I haven't tried) to drag her into any of the shows I watch. Anyway, over the past week or so I've been making time (in my lunch breaks and the like) to catch up on things - I'm now up to speed on Bleach (Well, apart from Episode 23, but I'm waiting for the Lunar Anime fansub on that count), and am on my way to catching up with Naruto too - I watched up to Episode 122 last night, and my wife is in London with friends until late tonight, which should allow me time for a mini-Naruto marathon. :oP

It feels somewhat wrong to be persevering with Naruto now it's been licensed - Theoretically speaking, I should be deleting the lot and waiting for an official release. But, unlike most anime, Naruto is unlikely to make it to the West in all its glory. Simply put, it is (Like Pokemon, Digimon, DragonBallz et al) a marketing man's dream. And who do marketing men love the most? Children, that's what. I think it's safe to assume that the Naruto that ends up airing in the US/UK will be shorn of any blood, gore and death, probably to the point of having entire episodes or plotlines removed. Recent episodes have seen the death of many a main character, something all but unthinkable to the marketing people over here (Imagine the controversy of killing Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie, and create it over and over on a weekly basis) - Is that really going to fly in the Western market? It'll be interesting to see what happens to the series as it transitions to the West, but I can't help but be pessimistic.

Outside of anime, everything is good enough. I finally got my X850 XT review done, and also managed to knock up a look at ATI's plans for 2005. I really should be looking towards my next reviews and articles instead of watching copious amounts of anime tonight, but.. Well... Tough. :oP I'll get around to it soon enough, I promise. Now CeBit is over, I'm also waiting for... Well, I'm not sure what to be honest. But something. I don't even know if it's good or bad, just something, and I know someone who might be reading this who knows the answer. :oP Oh well, patience is a virtue that I'm slowly learning to co-exist with, so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see...

2MB broadband and hardware aplenty

2005-03-10T10:11:00.000Z

It happened a day earlier than I was expecting, but I now have a 2MBit ADSL connection in my house, thanks to Nildram's new offerings. In July, all of their customers get regraded to 2MB (assuming their line can handle it) regardless, but for just shy of £13 they'll do the job right away. Of course, I couldn't resist, and put in my order at the tail-end of last week. I was given an activiation date of today, but last night found myself sitting pretty with a higher connection speed. I haven't really stretched its legs yet, but it certainly felt nice while I was downloading Catalyst 5.3... :o)

On the reviewing front, I finally polished off the article from one of our forum members last night, so that went live today. I have no excuse not to start on my next big review now, and I really need to get a move on with it, seeing as I've secured another couple of video cards for review, which'll be going head-to-head with one another. I'm intrigued as to how the two boards will shape up after having seen all the marketing, so I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into them. You guys will have to wait and see what I'm talking about, although some of you should be able to guess already. :oP

In an ideal world, I really want to review the ASUS SLI motherboard I picked up, but it really doesn't feel right to even attempt to review an nForce4 SLI board without testing its SLI capabilities. I also have to question myself as to what exactly should be tested benchmark-wise on a modern motherboard - When you take a look around most reviews and find a set of largely theoretical results that show little differentiation between different boards, you have to wonder what the point is, perhaps it's better to concentrate largely on feature set. So, I think that one can take a place on the back burner for now, but it's still something to think about for the future.

Away from the whole computer hardware and Elite Bastards thing, life and love are going just swimmingly still, although with nothing spectacular to report. It's actually been a quiet week all things considered.

Six months and NDAs

2005-03-02T10:58:00.000Z

Monday was mine and Tara's six month wedding anniversary - Maybe nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but to me it seems like an important milestone. Considering all the stories of rough rides I'd heard from others, the whole six-month period has gone fantastically smoothly, give or take the odd tiny bump or two. I seriously can't imagine myself being any more happy or content than this - I know I must go on about it in basically every single Blog entry, but I still can't get over how things have changed for me over the past few years, all thanks to one person. :o)

In other news, the NDA for ATI's HyperMemory technology expired yesterday (as anyone who saw my article will have realised), although to my minor irritation it was pushed forward a couple of days at virtually the last minute, leaving me with only a couple of hours to polish off what I'd done so far and pour all of the rest of my thoughts into the article. All in all, it came out pretty well all things considered, seeing as I was all but ready to forget the NDA lifting time and simply publish it "When it's done". It may not be the most interesting technology in the universe, but it was still article-worthy to my mind and it was nice to be on 'the inner circle' of these things for once. :oP The experience has piqued my interest in how these low-end boards and their memory sharing technologies perform in the real world as well, so maybe that's one for the future. :o) The next article on my 'to do' list for Elite Bastards is a biggie, but I want to get it done sooner rather than later. I also have in my possession another intriguing article written by a contributor which I'll try to get out the door this week once I've cleaned it up and sorted out some charts.

Nothing much else to report really - Work is ticking along as per usual, Tara drank way too much watching Chelsea win the Carling Cup, Bill Murray and William Dafoe were both great in 'The Life Aquatic' and... err.... that's it really.

Iran jails blogger for 14 years

2005-02-25T10:18:00.000Z

Reading a story like this is certainly enough to make me glad I live where I do...

"An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries.

Arash Sigarchi was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists."

Happiness

2005-02-24T11:18:00.000Z

Another big gap between Blog updates, but there hasn't been all that much to talk about lately - Just a slow, steady stream of happiness and contentedness.

Work has been busy (And probably worthy of some cheap, tacky documentary - When Transitions To Active Directory Go Wrong), but never to hair-pulling-out extremes. It seems to have been an unlucky couple of weeks, with failure after failure of systems, hardware, etc, but we seem to be over the worst of it now so maybe things will quiten down. Aside from that, I've loved being back - I honestly didn't realise how much I missed hearing a 'thank you' from someone on completing a job, it just seems to make it all worthwhile. The reintroduction of deep analysis of the football from the night/weekend gone by has been a big bonus as well.

I've also enjoyed my reintroduction to the fullness of the Elite Bastards fold over the past few weeks as well, I swear it's one of, if not the, best communities there is. It really is a joy to post news and articles there and see the responses and debates that follow, it makes the whole process worthwhile.

Finally, life at home is very good - Tara has (understandably) had a few pangs of homesickness this past week, but we're both very happy with everything right now, and I love spending every free moment with her. We spent last night watching 'Saw' on DVD - A pretty good movie, but still kind of a poor man's 'Se7en'. Mind you, 'Se7en' is probably one of my top five movies, so it would take a Hell of a lot to knock it from its lofty perch. I also shelled out on the new Doves album, which I haven't listened to properly but sounded pretty good, and also 'Dead Or Alive Ultimate' for the X-Box - The opportunity to let my wife beat seven shades out of me was too much to pass up... ;o)

Love is in the air...

2005-02-14T12:25:00.000Z

It's Valentine's Day today (R.I.P. to anyone who has forgotten ;o) ), so I believe the law requires that I mention love in the subject title here. Anyway, today is my first day back in my new old job (Read the post below if that confuses you) - It's great to be back among friendly, familiar faces, and in an environment where you can interact with people away from just phones, e-mails and MSN. I'm not the most sociable person in the World normally, so I surprised myself saying this, but I really missed the human interaction element of working from home. I've spent most of the morning catching up on what's being going on at work the past couple of months, as well as trying to configure myself a new PC here in the office - And boy have I ended up with a crap one! Oh well, it's not like I need anything all-singing all-dancing I suppose.

As of Saturday my wife had been in England three weeks now, and everything is still going beautifully - Every day is a joy to partake in. We've had some great days out, great days in, and I only wish I could be at home for Valentine's Day... I guess I didn't plan that one out so well! Still, I had a bunch of roses delivered to the house not long after I left, and also left her with an 'Andy replacement' in the form of a cuddly toy. I fear I've lost my place in bed now!! :oP

Website-wise, I've taken my leaving HEXUS as a chance to re-evaluate and look to the future of Elite Bastards. I think, when it comes down to it, that I'm something of a control freak, and I need the relaxed atmosphere where I can basically do what I want to produce my best work. It hasn't taken long for the writing flame in me to resurface, and although I won't have that much free time any more I have quite a few plans for what I want to do there as the year progresses. I'm already working on getting the test rig side of things up to scratch, with today seeing the arrival of... Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? ;o) I also got hold of some great stuff last week as well, so keep your eyes peeled. I hope it'll be an exciting time on that front, both for myself and anyone else involved in the site, be they staff or readers.

So, I'll leave you all with Valentine's Day wishes and I hope everyone reading this, single or otherwise, has a good one.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....

2005-01-31T13:00:00.000Z

Wow, what a couple of weeks it's been... Busy would be an understatement. A couple of weeks ago, I moved into my new place, so a lot of time has been spent getting things together to make the house into a home (Including a lot of self-assembly items - My hands still have the cuts and bruises!). Things are finally coming together, and I have a sofa/couch turning up tomorrow which will be another step closer to completing the jigsaw.

On the 22nd, I had to travel to London to meet my wife at Heathrow. Waiting for what seemed like forever while she went through customs and getting her baggage was nearly a soul-destroying experience, but was more than made up for by finally getting to see her again.. And for good this time. The past week has consisted almost solely of the two of us spending every waking (and sleeping) second together, I don't think we've been more than a few feet apart at any one time. Although the magnitude of the situation still hasn't really sunk in for either of us yet, I really can't describe how happy I am right now - There simply isn't a word for how being around Tara day in, day out makes me feel, it really is the best.

Finally, on the big news front, I quit HEXUS a couple of weeks ago. With my wife here, I don't want to spend long evenings when I should be with her slaving over editorial, and it was pretty clear that the HEXUS job would involve a lot of that. Secondly, I quickly realised that I wouldn't be able to support myself and Tara properly financially from working for them full-time. Thus, a couple of quick phone calls to my former boss, and I was soon invited back to work where I was before at better pay and on some more exciting new projects. I start back there a couple of weeks from now, which hopefully gives me chance to finish all my outstanding HEXUS work and spend some more time with my wife to boot! I'm kind of sad in some ways that reviewing/writing full-time didn't work out, and I had great fun getting to try out the hardware I did, but my private life and family is way more important than satiating the geek in me. It's something I'd try again though, but I think the circumstances would have to be hugely different to those I encountered this time around. Maybe if I win the lottery I'll give it another crack on my own terms... :oP

At the end of last week I finally got broadband back into my life, as my 1Mbit service was transferred to my new address. I'm very tempted to move up to the 2Mb feed available at this new property, but I'm holding out for the time being. This morning a whole load of 802.11g kit that I'd ordered turned up, so today so far has mainly involved me getting that all set up... I'm done now, and I have to say that it feels good to have a completely wires-free 54Mbps network. Everything was beautifully easy to set up, and all in all it took me no time at all to get to exactly where I wanted to be network topology-wise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of downloading to catch up on... ;o)

I hold in my hand....

2005-01-12T19:25:00.000Z

...the key to our bungalow. Yep, I got everything finalised today, and it's now mine to keep. Well, rent, but don't spoil the imagery. ;o) I also have the water, gas and electricity connected, so all that's left for me to do now is get the phone line connected and sorted, followed by an ADSL link up and running, and I'm 100% sorted. Well, apart from all the furniture and the like I need.

It's been a busy time in the HEXUS department too, with exciting things coming my way almost as quickly as I can deal with them. Today saw the release of my preview of Corsair's new RAM, which is pretty darn cool I must say, and also released (sort of, it isn't on the front page but got linked to elsewhere, God knows how that happened) was my look at Gigabyte's 3D1 video card - SLI, but on a single board... I don't need to explain to you why that's cool I'm sure. ;o) Still plenty of interesting things in the pipeline too, so I don't think I'll be getting bored any time soon.

Aside from that, I'm now counting down the days until I get to pick my wife up on Heathrow on the 22nd... Life is going to start getting very different from here on it, but in the best way possible.

I have a house!!

2005-01-05T16:13:00.000Z

Well, almost.... The deal is all but done, I just have to stump up exorbitent amounts of rent now and it's all mine!!

All of that should be sorted by this time next week, still leaving plenty of time until my wife arrives on the 22nd. After all, I only still have to sort out gas, water, electricity, phone lines, broadband, furniture.....

There are other exciting things in the pipeline too, but I'm not going to talk about those yet. :oP

Heart Shaped Box

2004-12-24T11:03:00.000Z

Oooh... Looks like I've been slacking on the Blog front, doesn't it? Probably because I have, although at least I suppose it's proof of being busy. ;o)

Anyways, today is Christmas Eve, a day on which it is notoriously difficult to get into a working frame of mind. Which is why I'm sat here, Blogging. As you can probably guess from the lack of updates here, work at HEXUS has given me plenty to do, which is most definitely a good thing, and is still providing plenty of enjoyment on my end. Aside from that, life goes on as normal, aside from the prospect of needing to find a place for me and the wife to live within the next few weeks, a process that will gather pace once Christmas is out of the way. It's hard not to get stressed about that, but I'm sure everything will slot into place in due time.

Today's entry title comes from (obviously) the Nirvana song, pumped to me as I write this courtesy of Last.FM - Possibly the greatest Internet radio service ever. To explain, the site is partnered with another great site - Audioscrobbler. The basic principle of Audioscrobbler is that you download a plug-in for your favourite media player, which then notes the mp3s you listen to and collates them in a central database under an account you've set up on the site, then displaying your listening habits and so on and so forth.

Last.FM takes this one step further by offering you an Internet radio station which chooses what songs to feed you based around the music in your profile. It works incredibly well, and rarely gives you a song that you'll hate. Even if it does, you have 'Love', 'Skip' and 'Ban' buttons to denote songs you really love or hate, and your profile will thus become more specific to your tastes from there. I can't praise the service enough (They have a pay service too with some extra functionality, which I'm seriously considering forking out for), so anyone with an interest in broadening their musical horizons or simply listening to some damn fine music should check it out at least one. See? A Pixies song has just come on. Yes, it's that good.

Finally, this is my opportunity to wish anyone reading this a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope you all have a great time, and stay tuned to everything I do through 2005! ;o)

This is traditionally a time to start taking stock of the year just gone by, and I can safely say that 2004 is the best year of my life. Great new job, fantastic wife, and plenty of good friends out there. Some (if not all) of you reading this have played a part, big or small, in making this a great year for me, so to you goes my heartfelt thanks and gratitude.

First day of school

2004-12-06T19:17:00.000Z

Yes, that's right, today was my first day of full-time employment with HEXUS. And I did I enjoy it? You bet your life I did! ;o)

My first day proved to be pretty fruitful, as I managed to knock out a couple of articles by the day's end, and also got things a little more organised here in my 'bunker' - Which is a good job, as I have a shed-load more stuff headed my way! Oh, and did I mention that Rys is the greatest boss in the World ever? (Seeing as I'm sure he'll read this, I guess this is the online equivalent of giving the teacher an apple, but hey, he's a great guy, what can I say?)

To complete a fine day, I received my Christmas present from Tara today. Of course, no placing of items under Christmas trees on this occasion, I dived straight into the box. :oP All I can say is, that girl has got to stop spoiling me! Oh well, I do exactly the same to her, and have done this Christmas, so I guess we're even.

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch

2004-12-02T09:30:00.000Z

So, Valve had a Half-Life 2 Deathmatch mode under their sleeves all along then... It got released on Steam yesterday, and I have to say, it's.... Unique. What other DM gametype lets you pick things up and throw them and people? You have to give Valve some kudos for taking the physics engine that helps make Half-Life 2 itself so impressive, and successfully inject it into an online game mode.

Having said that, the enjoyment of the whole thing was somewhat short-lived for me - There's only so many times you can chuckle with glee as you crush someone in a corner with a car, or take them out with a well-placed radiator to the head. After a while, it starts to feel more like 'domestic argument simulator' (Hey, there's an idea for a mod!), with everybody eschewing traditional weapons in favour of simply throwing stuff at each other. It's immensely fun for half an hour or so, but then it starts to feel kind of childish. Maybe I'm just getting old...

Still, now it's out there and at the mercy of the mod community, there's stacks of potential in their, so I can imagine some really great things coming out of it. It's been a long time since I've really found a game I can get into playing regularly online (Battlefield 1942 was probably the last I gave up any real time to), but maybe something under the Half-Life 2 moniker will crop up and grab me.

Away from that, my Leadtek 6800GT and Ultra review (yes, them again!) for HEXUS is done, so I'll throw it into the back-end once I'm done with this. I can't wait until next week when I can start really sitting down and cranking out content, especially seeing as my last few days of my current job are going soooo slowly - There's only so much you can do when you know you're about to leave!

January 21st 2005

2004-11-29T16:21:00.000Z

Is now the provisional date for when my wife will return to England. Permanently. Nothing much more to say... :oD

I'm incredibly excited, and also tearing my hair out at the amount I need to sort out in such a short period. It's going to be an interesting few weeks.

Now the end is in sight, I'm just tired...

2004-11-25T16:05:00.000Z

After tomorrow, only one more week to go until I start my new job! Unfortunately, that means lots of paperwork and writing up notes for my successors. Still, I'm pretty much done with it so next week should be relatively simple.

As for Hexus work, I feel a lot more comfortable now I know my way around the back-end and can put my own articles in the system - I can be something of a control freak at times, so having that extra step available to me makes a big difference. :oP Apart from that, review work has ground to a halt thanks to our wonderful postal service - They certainly know how to make losing things look easy! Oh well, hopefully it'll show up eventually... I have a plethora of guides on various things to write now too, so that should keep me out of trouble as well. :o)

Aside from that, things are looking really good for my wife to move over here towards the end of January next year - She's basically all set aside from buying a plane ticket. It might even be sooner, who knows? Of course, this kind of puts the pressure on me to find us a place to live somewhat, so I'll have to crack on with that once I'm bedded down in the new job. Still, all that aside, I really really can't wait. I have a feeling 2005 is going to be a great year. :oD

Heh, it feels weird thinking about 2005 - I remember the Transformers Movie being set in the year 2005 to give it a futuristic feel, and twenty years later, here we are...

Feeling Peaky

2004-11-22T09:56:00.000Z

All things considered, it's been a kind of busy time since my last entry. The big stress of last week was works attempt to wring every last drop out of me in my final couple of weeks with the company, in the form of sending me all around the UK handing out ID cards - A real "you're leaving, fuck you" job if ever I saw one. Anyway, after plenty of debate and discussion, revolving around me pointing out what an insane idea it was (Why not just send the cards out to the sites for other people to dish out? Handing out cards and getting a form signed isn't rocket science), I finally got my point across and the idea was canned. This leaves me free to concentrate on the important things that need to get done in my final two weeks, thank goodness.

I was in London the whole of Saturday, to see Arsenal's game against West Brom - It ended in a hugely disappointing 1-1 draw, but it was good to be back at Highbury after not being able to make it at all last season. Damn, it was cold though! It was also cool to get my first look at Arsenal's new stadium at Ashburton Grove (aka The Emirates Stadium - ugh), it's fantastic that they found a site so close to Highbury (You can see the new stadium easily from the North Bank). The worst part of my Saturday was the train journeys - Engineering works meant that the trains were taking detours, which meant a 3 hour journey up to London, and closer to 4 hours back!

The number of games I want to make time for is growing ever longer - Inevitably, Half-Life 2 is still my main focus (I can't believe people have completed it already, I could never dedicate that much time to any game in a single sitting), but the Pro Evolution Soccer 4 demo released on Friday has caught my eye too - I didn't like it to being with, but I'm starting to warm to it. Then there's Football Manager 2005 (Which is basically Championship Manager under a different name), which is time consuming at the best of times, and I haven't even installed Need For Speed: Underground 2. Oh, woe is me... :oP

Things have slowed right up on the reviewing front, as I'm currently left waiting for things to show up before I can move on with most of the things I have sat here. But, my second review for Hexus was published at the weekend, which is always edifying. Two more weeks, and I'll be beavering away on this stuff full-time... It just can't come quickly enough!!

Finally, as we're fast approaching December, no doubt you'll all be looking for Christmas presents for me... To make life easier for you, look no further than here. ;o)

Half-Life 2

2004-11-17T09:58:00.000Z

Last night afforded me the opportunity to play Half-Life 2 for a couple of hours, so it's somewhat inevitable that I'm going to have to wax lyrical about it here.

First off, I know a fair few people had issues with Steam and unlocking the game yesterday, but for me the whole procedure was flawless. I actually ended up unlocking it twice on my two systems, the first at 8:00am as soon as the game became available, and the other at around 1:00pm - Both working flawlessly. I didn't get to fire up the game on either system until the evening, but again it worked on both occasions with no problems. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally the whole process was impressively smooth.

So, on to the game itself. The first thing of note is the graphics - The background to the opening menu screen looks stunning, but when you fire up the game you might find yourself a little underwhelmed. I know I was briefly, until I realised why - This game isn't designed to look jaw-droppingly pretty like Far Cry or the like, it's made to look realistic. That means (with the odd exception) no stupid, plastic-looking characters and surfaces, everything has an understated, grittily realistic look to it. And it works very well indeed, to the point where sometimes you want to just stop and admire how right everything looks even in the middle of a firefight.

Then there's the gameplay. Again, for the first couple of minutes I didn't feel right, or particularly immersed in the game. I was expecting another long intro sequence on the train to acclimatise, but no, that was all over very quickly, which left me feeling a little empty. Empty, that is, until I stepped off the train and wandered to close to a security guard, you have me a sharp shove to push me to a safer distance. A small touch perhaps, but enough to pull me into the atmosphere of the game - All of a sudden, I felt intimidated by my surroundings, and it was onwards and upwards from there.

Much as Doom 3 was very much a reimagining of Doom and Doom 2, so Half-Life 2 holds dear to it everything that made the original the great game that it was. This is something of a relief in this world of ever-decreasing sequels. If anything, the introduction of realistic physics as taken Half-Life 2 into the realm where Half-Life wanted to exist but perhaps didn't quite make it. In most situations you find yourself with two options - Brute force, taking out your opponents one by one (and using a lot of ammo in the process), or thinking smart and using the surroundings to your advantage. Okay, so most of the 'puzzles' (if you can call them that) are simple enough, but it all sits together very well with the game itself.

There's a lot to be said for the characters in the game too - When Half-Life 2 was first announced and Alyx unveiled, I started to worry about what this sequel would hold. But, thus far, to my relief the additional characters add to the game rather than distract from it. Having said that, why did they make Gordon Freeman mute? It was bad enough with the Doom 3 marine, but it makes even less sense here.

Half-Life 2 has also surprised me with its stabs at humour so far - They're actually funny. Normally (with a few exceptions), attempts at jokes in most games fall flat on their face, but thanks to the quality of the graphics, characters and voice actors, it works exceedingly well. I don't remember ever laughing out loud at a game before (Not when the developers intended it, anyway).

From the sound of point of view, it isn't as impressive as Doom 3, but still more than acceptable. It doesn't seem to like running on a generic AC97 on-board sound controller though, the game stutters like crazy sometimes when it access a new sound. I'm yet to try it out properly on my Audigy equipped-rig yet.

So, as of right now, I'm truly in love with this game - It's been a while since I've found a game so difficult to drag myself away from, it really does drag you in like something I haven't experienced since... Well... Half-Life. There's still a long way to go, so I might get bored or have something ruin it.. We'll have to see. But, for now, I'm just going to sit at work itching to get back to City 17...